The Mason Spirit

Researchers at Mason’s Center for Applied Proteomics and Molecular Medicine are bringing personalized medicine to more people with metastatic breast cancer in their latest clinical trial. This third phase of breast cancer research, supported the Side-Out Foundation, involves 100 patients from 10 sites around the United States and is the center’s largest clinical trial yet.

Continue Reading Targeting Treatments

Personalized. Precision. Predictive. One size doesn’t fit all, especially when it comes to health care.

Continue Reading There Is No One Right Way to Treat a Patient—There Are 7 Billion

Analyzing the wealth of data available in electronic health records is a powerful new weapon driving personalized medicine and helping improve health care delivery. It is the central focus of Mason’s highly specialized health informatics program. The key to predicting a disease, identifying likelihood of a hospital readmission, or determining the best drug to prescribe in a given circumstance may be found in these records.

Continue Reading Unlocking Key Information in Health Records

Mason researcher Patrick Gillevet, director of Mason’s MicroBiome Analysis Center, studies the microbiome—the assortment of microorganisms in a given environment—and its relationship to human disease. Studies have found an individual’s microbiome can affect many aspects of health and illness, including cognition, obesity, cirrhosis, and even autism.

Continue Reading Microorganisms and How They Relate to Disease

William Rosenberger would like to see more favorable odds for patients in clinical trials. So the University Professor and chair of Mason Engineering’s Department of Statistics is helping medical researchers apply the concepts used in personalized medicine to better design studies—and benefit patients. In personalized medicine, patients get targeted treatments based on their genetics, specific…

Continue Reading Beating the Odds for Better Clinical Trials

In his second book, Peter T. Leeson, PhD Economics ’05, shares the economic reasoning behind some of the world’s strangest practices and superstitions. It turns out that these rules were actually not so much strange as they were meticulously planned responses to pressing social problems. From Italy’s criminal prosecution of cockroaches and crickets to accused criminals in Liberia choosing to drink poison to determine their fates, Leeson’s new book studies the rational thought behind irrational practices.

Continue Reading Q&A with Peter Leeson

Barbara Gomperts, MA English ’08, wondered how she was going to make one can of beans last three days.   She had $4.18 to spend on food each day for the next three days—a total of $12.54.   For Gomperts, a nutrition major, this was a project for the NUTR 626 Food Systems class, offered at Mason this summer. But for others, it’s a way of life.   Students in the class…

Continue Reading Rice, Beans, and a Serving of Reality

While they aren’t able to communicate telepathically or feel each other’s pain as some twins claim to do, they do share a bond that helps them work together effectively in Mason’s School of Nursing. Professors Caroline Sutter, MSN ’01, DNP ’12, and Rebecca Sutter, MSN ’01,DNP ’12, are training the next generation of health care providers together at Mason, and they’re taking home accolades for doing it.

Continue Reading Double Take

For more than 30 years, Mason ecologists have been monitoring the Chesapeake Bay watershed and finding ways to help the ecosystem repair itself. The opening of Mason’s new Potomac Science Center is providing a space to elevate and showcase the environmental research being done in this region.

Continue Reading Down by the Bay

A group of Mason students took a trip to an important Civil War site and never left the Fairfax Campus.

Continue Reading Stepping into the Past