Medical University Of South Carolina

A team of MUSC researchers report in Frontiers in Immunology that they have identified a type of fat known as a sphingolipid that could predict the severity of heart disease in African American patients with lupus. The team was led by Samar M. Hammad, Ph.D., associate professor in the MUSC College of Medicine, and the study was funded in part by a pilot project grant from the South Carolina

For Argentino Calvo, a retired firefighter and paramedic from Bluffton, South Carolina, joining a COVID-19 vaccine trial was not just a personal choice but an investment in the health of his community. Calvo participated in the Novavax vaccine trial at MUSC, which was part of a large-scale study that recruited over 30,000 patients across 119 study sites in the United States and Mexico. SCTR co

When Miss America 2020, Camille Schrier, walked into the Norris Lab on the campus of the Medical University of South Carolina, she was among peers. Not other contestants but other people who love science and are affected by an uncommon connective tissue disorder called Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, or EDS. Schrier is perhaps not a typical Miss America. Her winning talent was a chemistry experiment, and

People who successfully fight off COVID-19 without showing symptoms have much higher levels of IgG antibodies against the virus’s spike protein than do patients who were hospitalized with COVID-19, reports a research team led by Shikhar Mehrotra, Ph.D., of the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) in a recent issue of iScience. The researchers screened for the IgG antibody to the viral spike

Researchers at the South Carolina Clinical & Translational Research (SCTR) Institute have developed a novel bioinformatic tool called RINS, the Research Integrated Network of Systems, that can be used to evaluate whether improvements to the clinical trial process are making a difference. Their results, published online on March 17 in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association

When the pandemic hit, clinical researchers jumped into action, starting up trials of COVID vaccines and treatments in record time. Without experienced and knowledgeable clinical research coordinators to run those trials, South Carolinians would not have had early access to these cutting-edge tools for fighting the virus. Those research professionals were at the ready, thanks to an initiative

When his doctor told him that he had acute myeloid leukemia (AML) and less than a 1 in 5 chance of survival, David Zaas, M.D., thought first of his wife and how badly he wanted to see his two teenage children grow up. He wanted every opportunity to win his battle, and the opportunity to enroll in a phase 1 trial ensured that he was doing everything possible. Clinical trials are the only way to

Back in March, when Lucy Krasker was finishing up her final year at the University of Virginia, she began experiencing what she thought were allergy symptoms as she does each year. But when she lost her sense of smell, she decided to be tested for COVID-19. When her test came back positive, her family also went in for testing, and her mother, Amy Krasker, also tested positive. “It's an indelible

According to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, suicide is the 10th leading cause of death in the U.S., with over 1.4 million suicide attempts recorded in 2018. Although effective treatments are available for those at risk, clinicians do not have a reliable way of predicting which patients are likely to make a suicide attempt. Researchers at the Medical University of South Carolina

Translational research aims to speed research breakthroughs into the clinic. And yet, training for basic scientists and clinicians too often remains siloed, leading to divergent cultures and a loss of opportunity for cross-disciplinary collaboration. The South Carolina Clinical & Translational Research (SCTR) Institute’s TL1 program, a translational research training program for doctoral students

Hailed for its ability to erase distance between health care providers in cities and patients in rural areas, telehealth has ironically enabled medical care to continue in a time when we all must keep our distance. Across the country, telehealth use has spiked as providers offer virtual patient visits to ensure medical needs are met while minimizing COVID-19 exposure. Regulatory agencies have

A protein highly expressed in lung cancer cells drives resistance to targeted therapies, report researchers at the Medical University of South Carolina in the Journal of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery. In preclinical experiments, the researchers showed that inhibiting the protein caused the death of non-small cell lung cancer cells that had become resistant to therapy. The MUSC Team was led

Many of South Carolina’s nicotine addiction researchers are in Charleston. But many of the smokers who need to quit live elsewhere in the state. This poses a dilemma for researchers and smokers alike. Researchers can’t enroll large and representative groups of smokers into their trials. And smokers who would like to quit cannot easily access investigational treatments that could help them to do so

All current breast cancer drugs were first tested in cell lines. Each cell line began as cancer in a patient. As such, each cell line is a surrogate for that patient's disease. A new database of 40 breast cancer cell lines, developed by Medical University of South Carolina investigators, will help researchers deepen their understanding of these cell lines and speed the development of new gene

Size matters when it comes to research, as illustrated by recent debates about whether hydroxychloroquine is effective against COVID-19. Some small studies showed it was effective while others showed it wasn’t. The studies couldn’t arrive at a definitive answer because they didn’t enroll enough patients to reach sufficient statistical “power.” More relevant results are only now beginning to emerge

An interprofessional group of professors at the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) and educators at the Gibbes Museum of Art in Charleston, SC are collaborating to create a safe space through art for conversations about the complex issues facing health care providers. The effort is led by Cynthia Dodds, Ph.D., associate professor in the MUSC College of Health Professions and principal

As COVID-19 cases surge in South Carolina and other hot spots around the country, demand continues to grow for remdesivir, one of the only medications that has shown benefit in patients with severe disease. Unfortunately, Gilead Science, the drug's manufacturer, had limited supplies of remdesivir on hand when its benefits for patients with severe COVID-19 were first announced this spring. As a

To prepare for current and future waves of COVID-19, the U.S. Army’s Telemedicine and Advanced Technology Research Center asked teams from across the country to compete to build a telehealth prototype that would provide adequate ICU capacity when cases surge. Of the 78 teams that competed, only nine were invited to complete a series of tasks designed to establish the feasibility of their

As MUSC Health leaders began to plan for the onslaught of COVID-19, they thought that Charleston would see the highest increases in hospitalizations in South Carolina. Instead, some of MUSC Health’s regional hospitals, acquired just over 15 months ago, have been the hardest hit. MUSC Health Florence Medical Center, for example, has one-fourth the patient census of MUSC Health Charleston but four

Doctors and researchers are faced with innumerable questions about the novel coronavirus. As a novel, or new, virus to humans, SARS-CoV-2 is still mysterious. How exactly is it attacking? Why do some people get mild, barely noticeable cases while other previously healthy people end up intubated in intensive care units? How does the immune system respond to this virus, and how does it exacerbate

The emergence of SARS-Cov-2, the virus behind the COVID-19 pandemic, has reminded us how important it is to speed research breakthroughs into clinical practice. Testing potential new tests and therapies for COVID-19 in clinical trials ensures that only those that are effective and safe make it to the clinic. But how can the pace of those trials be sped up? And how does one conduct such trials

Investigators with the Supporting Pediatric Research on Outcomes and Utilization of Telehealth (SPROUT) NCATS collaborative U01 hosted a nationwide call (March 12, 2020) in collaboration with the American Academy of Pediatrics Section on Telehealth to discuss how both adult and pediatric telehealth is being used in response to COVID-19 nationally. Nine leading healthcare institutions presented on

Researchers and the participants who enroll in their clinical trials do not always speak the same language, making it difficult to share trial results with study participants. As a result, most clinical trial participants are not told the results of the study in which they were involved, though most would like to know, and most researchers would like to tell them, report National Institutes of