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  • Video Interviews

    Video
    January 12, 2010

    The Most Precious Natural Resource

    Nobel laureate Peter Agre surveys some examples of pressing problems in the United States and around the world arising from threats to water supplies.

    Video
    January 12, 2010

    The Silver Tsunami

    National Institute on Aging Deputy Director Marie Bernard explains why the aging of America over the coming decades will place unprecedented strains on the U.S. healthcare system.

    Video
    January 11, 2010

    Dentistry for Aging Adults

    Ira Lamster, Dean of the Columbia University College of Dental Medicine, describes the challenges of delivering good oral care to older patients, and why integrating medicine and dentistry can improve patients' overall health.

    Video
    October 5, 2009

    The Dendritic Cell

    Ralph Steinman received the 2007 Lasker Award in honor of his discovery of the dendritic cell, a critical component of the immune response. Here he describes his finding and its ongoing implications for research into cancer and immunology.

    Video
    October 2, 2009

    Cancer Vaccines

    As University of Pittsburgh immunologist Olivera Finn explains, targeted immunotherapy against cancer has shown encouraging results in recent years, and could become a powerful tool when combined with personalized medicine.

    Video
    September 25, 2009

    Letting the Data Speak

    With technologies like GPS, gene chips, and the Internet, we are awash in data. As Columbia University computer scientist Tony Jebara describes, extracting useful information from it all is the goal of the new field of machine learning.

    Video
    August 12, 2009

    The Trouble with Dengue

    Scott Halstead, research director of the Pediatric Dengue Vaccine Initiative, explains how global urbanization is promoting the spread of dengue virus and describes challenges to vaccine development.

    Video
    August 5, 2009

    Anti-Angiogenic Cancer Research

    William Li, president of the Angiogenesis Foundation, notes that targeting the molecular pathways by which tumors recruit blood vessels to nourish themselves has become a promising strategy against cancer.

    Video
    July 23, 2009

    It's Not About the Robots

    Inventor Dean Kamen explains why scientists and engineers need to be active role models for young people, and how his program FIRST is transforming kids’ sense of their potential.

    Doris Bucher's laboratory produced a seed strain used to develop a vaccine for swine H1N1 influenza. Here, she explains why she is “very optimistic” that an effective vaccine will be developed.

    Michael Shaw has been a leader in the CDC's response to the 2009 swine flu outbreak. Here he describes the challenges public health officials face, and the lessons they've learned from the crisis.

    Issar Smith spent over 42 years at the Public Health Research Institute studying the control of sporulation and gene regulation in Bacillus subtilis and pathogenesis in Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Here he describes the highlights of his career.

    Epidemiologist Chris Beyrer explains how in the absence of human rights, public health suffers. Beyrer is working in Burma to conduct public health research and provide health services to internally displaced people.

    Video
    October 30, 2008

    The Challenge of Climate Change

    Considering humanity's capacity to address this problem, longtime member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Michael Oppenheimer observes, "Things are under our control, if we choose to exert that control."

    Marc Feldmann and Ravinder Maini developed the first therapy targeting a specific cytokine. Here Feldmann explains the connection between his groundbreaking work on rheumatoid arthritis and his latest research on diseases such as atherosclerosis.

    Video
    October 29, 2008

    The TNF-α Story

    Ravinder Maini, awarded the Lasker Prize (with Marc Feldmann) for the development of anti-TNF therapy, explains the cytokine's central role in inflammation, and why his translation of this knowledge into a treatment for rheumatoid arthritis was a landmark in the field of protein therapeutics.

    Thomas Tuschl, a pioneer in the microRNA field, explains the role of posttranscriptional regulation in diseases like type 2 diabetes, and some of the technical challenges in developing oligonucleotide therapeutics.

    Immunologist Art Krieg argues that many of the effects of early antisense and RNA interference experiments were due to off-target immune effects of the oligonucleotides. But such effects aren't necessarily a bad thing; they may even offer unique opportunities for drug development.

    John Lamb of Rosetta Inpharmatics describes how systems biology can help reveal the role of individual genetic variation and environmental perturbations within complex diseases.

    Barry Levin, vice-chair of the Department of Neurosciences at New Jersey Medical School, explains the value of animal studies in obesity research, and describes how the perinatal environment has a big impact on whether rats, even those with obesity-resistant genes, become obese.