About 38 million people worldwide are living with AIDS. Pharmaceutical treatments can keep the disease in check, but a vaccine remains elusive despite decades of concerted effort. However, a recent discovery at the Duke Human Vaccine Institute (DHVI) brings the goal of an effective vaccine within reach.

The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases awarded researchers at the Duke Human Vaccine Institute a contract that enables it to compete for projects advancing investigational vaccines to production for use in early clinical trials.

With numerous recent studies demonstrating that antibiotics work as well as surgery for most uncomplicated appendicitis cases, the non-surgical approach can now be considered a routine option, according to a review article in JAMA

A STAT News investigation into Orthopaedic Surgery, deeming it "the whitest specialty."

Duke launches an ambitious new effort to elevate and sustain excellence in science and technology.

Humans are born with all the nerve cells they will ever have, and in each of those nerve cells live about two million mitochondria. As mitochondria age or become dysfunctional, the cell systematically removes them and replaces them with newer models. Neurobiologist Chantell Evans, PhD, wants to know more about this complex process.

Zhao Zhang, PhD — ZZ to just about everyone — is a bit of a scientific outlier. While most of his bioscience colleagues around the world are studying the 23,000 protein-coding genes that make us human, the assistant professor of pharmacology and cancer biology is looking at the other part of the genome and asking what it does.

Think of the inner circuitry of the brain as a traffic network. When nerve cells release a signal, the information speeds along various routes to its destination: another nerve cell elsewhere in the brain. Neurobiologist Josh Huang, PhD, is especially interested in a particular type of inhibitory nerve cells called chandelier cells.

The work of research team that includes Dr. David Montefiori of the Duke Human Vaccine Institute is highlighted in the NIH Director's Blog.

The human placenta performs a delicate balancing act: it must let beneficial nutrients pass from the mother to the developing fetus, but block harmful pathogens from making the same trip. Carolyn Coyne, PhD, investigates how the placenta has evolved to be such a fantastic protector but can also be vulnerable to pathogens.