Bruce Goldman

Dec 19, 2024 | med.stanford.edu | Bruce Goldman

Stanford Medicine scientists have designed a way to make our seasonal influenza vaccinations more broadly effective and possibly to protect us from new flu variants with pandemic potential. In a study published online Dec. 19 in Science, they’ve shown in cultured human tonsil tissue that the method works. Flu season is upon us, and flu is no joke. Every year, the influenza virus kills hundreds of thousands of people and sends millions to the hospital.

Dec 11, 2024 | med.stanford.edu | Bruce Goldman

Imagine a world in which a vaccine is a cream you rub onto your skin instead of a needle a health care worker pushes into your one of your muscles. Even better, it's entirely pain-free and not followed by fever, swelling, redness or a sore arm. No standing in a long line to get it. Plus, it's cheap. Thanks to Stanford University researchers' domestication of a bacterial species that hangs out on the skin of close to everyone on Earth, that vision could become a reality.

Oct 30, 2024 | scopeblog.stanford.edu | Kimberlee D'ardenne |Nina Bai |Bruce Goldman

For most of human history, drug discovery has often relied on serendipity. Various natural substances, usually from plants, were ingested or applied, their effects judged by both observation and superstition. Through trial and error, some enduring remedies emerged: morphine from poppy seeds, quinine from the bark of cinchona trees and aspirin from the bark of willow trees.

Oct 10, 2024 | scopeblog.stanford.edu | Hanae Armitage |Erin Digitale |Bruce Goldman

The 2024 Nobel Prize in chemistry was awarded Wednesday morning to three scientists who deepened our understanding of the protein cogs and widgets that make our cells function. Those understandings have already paved the way for new research at academic medical institutions such as the Stanford School of Medicine. One of the winners, biochemist David Baker, PhD, of the University of Washington, works frequently with several Stanford Medicine researchers.

Oct 4, 2024 | scopeblog.stanford.edu | Kimberlee D'ardenne |Bruce Goldman

Cells may be little, but they are also fierce and powerful -- as you may have already been reminded while reading the current issue of Stanford Medicine magazine. These tiny building blocks have a lot of the same internal structures in common, such as walls and appendages, an operation center called the nucleus, and energy reservoirs called mitochondria. What cells do with those shared structures varies so widely that new variations of cell functioning continue to be discovered.