Creative Bios

  A buildup of fat in the liver could  cause an aggressive type of nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), called nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) which is   a  condition with liver inflammation and damage. M ost of the time, it causes no symptoms and no problems, while in some worse cases, the fat causes inflammation and damages liver cells, affecting the normal function of the liver or even leading  to cirrhosis. Though the second leading indication for liver transplantation in the United States, NASH has no FDA-approved treatments currently. This  is drawing concerns from all stakeholders, including patients and providers, for which experts cal l for a great deal of focus on understanding and addressing this important liver disease that impacts clinical outcomes and the quality of life.   Diagnosis of  NASH   Because NASH are asymptomatic until patients are identified at advanced stages, a liver biopsy remains the gold standard for ma...

  Verification  of vaccine efficacy is necessary as it shows how well a candidate vaccine works in humans. However, testing vaccine efficacy in humans is costly, time-consuming, and complex because it may involve a large number of participants who might have geographic or demographic biases and it requires following cohorts of subjects for years to monitor protective efficacy. Moreover, vaccine efficacy studies in humans could get trouble in ethical issues when it comes to certain pathogens like HIV. Contrarily, model organisms, which are easy to maintain and breed in a laboratory setting with a short generation time, permit faster evaluation of promising vaccine candidates at a lower cost and risk compared with humans.   Some model organisms have similar genes or similar-sized genomes to humans, which means they can mimic the pathophysiology of human disease after being infected by a target pathogen and bear a resemblance to human immune responses. Theoretically, the imm...