News & Updates

The National Institutes of Health has dedicated $41.5 million for an initiative to understand and monitor the development of the human placenta during pregnancy. The funding will support the development of new technologies to assess the health of the placenta as it grows and matures, with the ultimate goal of improving the health of mothers and children.

The next NICHD Director’s Lecture at the NIH will feature Diana Bianchi, M.D., from Tufts University School of Medicine. Her talk, titled “Changing Paradigms: From Prenatal Genetic Diagnosis to Fetal Individualized Medicine,” will take place on January 21, 2015, 9:00–10:00 a.m., in Lipsett Amphitheater, at NIH’s Clinical Center in Bethesda, Md.

Researchers from the National Institutes of Health have entered into an agreement with biotechnology company Vtesse, Inc., of Gaithersburg, Maryland, to develop treatments for Niemann-Pick disease type C (NPC) and other lysosomal storage disorders.

Researchers at the National Institutes of Health have found a duplication of a short stretch of the X chromosome in some people with a rare disorder that causes excessive childhood growth. They believe that a single gene within the region likely has a large influence on how much children grow.

National Institutes of Health grantee William E. Moerner of Stanford University in California shares the 2014 Nobel Prize in chemistry for his work on optical microscopy that has opened the understanding of molecules by allowing researchers to see how the molecules work close up.

This month the NICHD and the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB) reissued two funding announcements, inviting grant applications for the development of methods to assess placental development and function. The Institutes intend to commit an estimated total of $2 million to small businesses in 2015 to support this research.

Scientists at the National Institutes of Health have created high-resolution images of the glutamate receptor, a protein that plays a key role in nerve signaling. The advance, published online in the journal Nature on August 3, 2014, opens a new window to study protein interactions in cell membranes in exquisite detail.

A new study has succeeded in creating detailed images of one group of receptors—the glutamate receptors—and this discovery may lead to therapies for these and other diseases and conditions.

Clinical Center researchers have identified the genetic defect underlying the disease for the first admitted patient at the Hatfield Clinical Research Center.

Researchers have found that hormone replacement therapy in young women with primary ovarian insufficiency (POI) led to increases in their bone mineral density, restoring levels to normal.

Todd Macfarlan, Ph.D, a biologist at the National Institutes of Health, was one of 102 researchers who received the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, the highest honor bestowed by the United States Government on science and engineering professionals in the early stages of their independent research careers.

The hormone oxytocin appears to increase social behaviors in newborn rhesus monkeys, according to a study by researchers at the National Institutes of Health, the University of Parma in Italy, and the University of Massachusetts Amherst. The findings indicate that oxytocin is a promising candidate for new treatments for developmental disorders affecting social skills and bonding.

For National Infertility Awareness Week, this April 20–26, the NICHD joins the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office on Women’s Health (OWH), the American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM), and RESOLVE: The National Infertility Organization for a Twitter chat on infertility.

Mutations in a gene containing part of the information needed to make an enzyme that provides energy for governing basic cell functions appear to contribute to a severe form of Cushing’s syndrome, according to researchers at the National Institutes of Health and nine European research institutions.

Dr. Randy Schekman sat down with NICHD to describe his research, talk about the role of NIH in supporting his discoveries, and discuss his plans for the future.

Many cases of a rare disorder of the adrenal glands appear to result from two copies of a mutant gene, according to a research team made up of scientists in France and at the U.S. National Institutes of Health.

Researchers at the National Institutes of Health have identified a potential new drug that could help in the treatment of a form of Batten disease, a fatal childhood disorder. The researchers tested the drug in mice with the disease and found that it slowed the loss of coordination seen in the disorder, and extended the animals’ life span.

This month’s NICHD Research Perspectives podcast focuses on adrenal gland disorders and research conducted by NICHD staff at the NIH Clinical Center.

Adults who have congenital adrenal hyperplasia, a disorder of the adrenal glands, may be eligible to take part in a study at the National Institutes of Health on the effectiveness of a new pump which delivers missing adrenal hormones in a manner more closely matching their release by the adrenal glands.

A team of NIH researchers, in collaboration with scientists from the University of Utah (Salt Lake City) and Tufts Medical Center (Boston), have identified a new syndrome involving two rare neuroendocrine tumors and a rare blood disease. The syndrome was observed in four female patients who had multiple paraganglioma and somatostatinoma tumors and the blood disease polycythemia.