Jojo was only 4 months old when she had her first seizure, which eventually led to a diagnosis of SCN8A epilepsy. This clinical-sounding abbreviation belies its heartbreaking reality: It’s a rare genetic mutation that can result in a severe, early-onset form of childhood epilepsy and developmental delays. And while traditional anti-seizure medications may initially control SCN8A symptoms, they can stop working or become less effective over time. Many children with the mutation don’t survive past early childhood. There is currently no cure.
Jojo’s parents — Patrick Ahearn, MD, transplant nephrologist in the Nephrology division at Stanford Department of Medicine, and his wife, Peggy Bui, MD, an internist — were devastated when they learned of their daughter’s diagnosis. But while networking with other families affected by rare diseases, they learned of the success story of Baby KJ — a baby with a previously untreatable, genetically inherited rare disease who was cured through personalized gene-editing therapy.
“When I heard that a baby was cured through a technology that was developed from start to finish in six months, I thought, ‘Hope is alive; I have a purpose and mission,’” says Bui.
Ahearn and Bui determined they would move heaven and earth to find a cure for SCN8A. This would entail fixing the gene mutation through gene editing, a process that has never been done across the blood-brain barrier. They began by launching the “Hope for Jojo” campaign and forming a 501(c)(3) nonprofit called Rare Break — a reference to the “rare break” Jojo has in her genome and the “rare break” she needs to find a cure — to fundraise for this multimillion-dollar effort.
Patrick Ahearn, MD, and Peggy Bui, MD, treasure their playtime with Jojo as they work toward a cure for her rare genetic disease.
The search for a cure involves developing, testing, manufacturing, and delivering a gene therapy tailored to Jojo’s mutation. Ahearn and Bui enlisted three entities to work in tandem on this cutting-edge process. Through Baby KJ’s story, they learned about the Innovative Genomics Institute (IGI), whose role is to create the CRISPR gene editor (a genetic engineering tool used to modify DNA) and determine how to deliver it to Jojo’s cells.
“Initially we weren’t sure if the IGI would be able to work on our project because Jojo’s condition is so rare,” says Ahearn, “but we were fortunate enough to connect with the IGI’s director of therapeutic research and development, Fyodor Urnov, who has been supportive of Stanford’s own budding gene therapy program.”
Once the IGI creates a gene editor proven to work with Jojo’s cells, The Jackson Laboratory will test its efficacy and safety on specially bred mice. Mice are biologically similar to humans and can be reprogrammed to express any number of genetic mutations, making them ideal for testing purposes. The Jackson Laboratory is using genome sequencing and genetic engineering to create mice that have the same SCN8A mutation as Jojo. “The work at The Jackson Laboratory has been going really well,” reports Ahearn. “Several mice were successfully born with the mutation, and these will be bred to create a larger cohort for testing.”
Playing a key role in the process is the Stanford Cardiovascular Institute Biobank (SCVI Biobank), founded by Joseph Wu, MD, director of the Stanford Cardiovascular Institute. The Biobank stem cell study team created the stem cells from Jojo’s blood that the IGI is using to test its gene editor.
Both The Jackson Laboratory and the IGI have helped secure some funding for these efforts, which they hope to scale for future research. The SCVI Biobank now has Jojo’s stem cells in its library of cell samples, which will be studied and shared with researchers around the world to advance scientific discoveries.
“We hope Jojo’s data from these experimental studies can help in making predictive models to create cures for rare diseases sooner, better, and faster,” says Bui.
While medications currently keep Jojo’s seizures at bay, her parents know it’s only a matter of time before they no longer work.
Ahearn has received tremendous support throughout Jojo’s journey, starting in the Nephrology division.
Before Jojo was diagnosed and put successfully on anti-seizure medications, she was frequently hospitalized on an emergency basis, and Ahearn had to cut back on his clinical responsibilities, often at the last minute. Tara Chang, MD, division chief of Nephrology, notes, “Patrick’s colleagues were very supportive in covering for him and doing whatever they could so that he could be with Jojo. When something like this happens, we’re quick to step up and help each other. We care about Patrick and want to support him in any way possible.”
“I received both clinical and emotional support from my colleagues,” Ahearn reflects. “Everyone has been so gracious and gone above and beyond. I couldn’t work in a better place.”
Nephrology was not the only division stepping up for Ahearn — he made helpful contacts throughout the Stanford family. And each outreach seemed to lead to another promising connection in Jojo’s journey.
“I’m grateful to so many at Stanford,” says Ahearn. “Vivek Bhalla, MD, who is doing a lot of work with gene therapy and has industry contacts that might be able to help later in the process, encouraged me to keep Euan Ashley, MD, PhD, involved in our journey. Dr. Ashley is collaborating with the IGI, among other expert teams, and encouraged me to reach out to Mary Leonard, MD, chair of pediatrics, who supports efforts involving curative pediatric genetic therapies. Rebecca Levy, MD, a pediatric neurologist, introduced me to Dr. Wu’s lab, whose research team is generating the stem cells. Xixi Zhao, MD, put me in touch with a company studying a new anti-seizure medicine that we might be able to get early access to. The level of interest and eagerness to help is overwhelming.”
Ahearn and Bui hope the platform they are building to cure SCN8A will benefit other children with genetic mutations. With the help of The Jackson Laboratory and the IGI, the process offers endless possibilities to address other conditions requiring genetic editing inside the brain — from Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s to autism. Notes Ahearn, “We’re going to make the mouse models, editors, and cells available to researchers who want to use them to study treatments for other neurological disorders.”
Looking ahead to the final phases, after safety studies and FDA approval, Ahearn hopes Jojo can ultimately receive her treatment at Stanford. “Stanford already has a clinical-grade cell manufacturing facility, which is rare in the academic world, and there’s a possibility that the treatment like the one we’re developing could be manufactured and delivered here,” he says.
Ahearn and Bui remain hopeful. “We’re really happy to have access to the best medicines for Jojo, but we know that with her condition, that’s not enough,” he says. “With the support of colleagues, family, friends, Stanford, and these other institutions, we’re trying to do something that’s never been done before — but it is within reach.”
Adults with sickle cell disease have long faced a fragmented care system that can leave them without a consistent medical home. Stanford physicians Giselle Salmasi, MD, and May Chien, MD, are changing that — building a comprehensive program that gives patients coordinated care, access to emerging therapies, and longer lives.
IgG4-RD can look like cancer, infection, or any number of autoimmune conditions, leaving patients like Yasuko bouncing between specialists for years without answers. For Yasuko, reaching Stanford rheumatologist Matthew Baker, MD, one of the world’s leading IgG4-RD experts, meant not just a diagnosis, but a doctor who listened, involved her in decisions, and took a personal investment in her care.
Stanford’s student-run free clinics have long been a cornerstone of community care — but a new partnership with Samaritan House is taking them further. The collaboration is expanding access for underserved patients while giving medical students things no classroom can offer: real experience, real responsibility, and real stakes.
When transplant nephrologist Patrick Ahearn, MD, and his wife, Peggy Bui, MD, learned that their baby had a rare, life-threatening genetic condition, they did what physician-parents do: They started searching for a cure. With the help of Stanford colleagues, they may have found one — and a path that could be replicated for other rare genetic diseases.
Long COVID looks different in every patient, which makes it nearly impossible to study and treat. Stanford data scientists are now using data from smartwatches to track how symptoms evolve over time and test which interventions actually help. Data Science Manager and lead author Fatma Gunturkun shares what they’re finding, and what it could mean for the millions still searching for answers.
For patients recovering from a serious illness or surgery, the gap between hospital care and what comes next can be dangerous. Stanford Health Care is closing that gap at St. Rose Hospital in Hayward, which is the first facility of its kind to house both a skilled nursing unit and an acute care hospital under one roof, developed in partnership with Alameda Health System.
Every clinical study begins with an idea. Getting it off the ground is another story. The Department of Medicine’s Clinical Research Hub is the team that steps in when a promising study hits a wall, offering hands-on support with regulatory hurdles, study design, recruitment, and more.
For Latha Palaniappan, MD, the elevated diabetes risk facing Asian and Asian American patients isn’t just a research question. It’s personal. ADVANCE, her new Stanford precision medicine hub, is investigating why these populations develop diabetes at higher rates, and often at lower body weights, than conventional models predict, and building the science to do something about it.
After building and selling a biotech company, Narges Baniasadi, PhD, could have continued climbing Silicon Valley’s corporate ladder. Instead, she returned to Stanford to launch Emergence, an entrepreneurship program that helps founders build companies tackling some of society’s toughest health challenges. The program is training a new generation of innovators to pursue both purpose and profit.
Margaret, 67, once faced a 14-week wait and a 45-minute drive to Palo Alto just to see a pulmonary specialist. Today she gets that same care close to home, as part of Stanford Pulmonary, Allergy, and Critical Care Medicine’s decade-long push to bring subspecialty expertise into the East Bay, building the fastest-growing service line in Stanford Health Care.
Fatma Gunturkun, PhD, Data Science Manager at Stanford’s Quantitative Sciences Unit (QSU), led a study that used wearable technology to objectively measure physiological changes in patients with long COVID.
For millions of people living with long COVID, the hardest part isn’t the symptoms — it’s the invisibility. Fatigue, brain fog, shortness of breath: These are experiences that resist measurement, fluctuating day to day and defying the single snapshot that a clinic visit can provide. Now, a Stanford research team is turning to the devices already on patients’ wrists for answers.
A new study published in JAMA Network Open found that data from consumer smartwatches can reveal distinct physiological and behavioral patterns among people with long COVID, patterns that align meaningfully with the symptoms that patients report. The findings suggest that wearable technology could one day serve as an objective, continuous window into a condition that has long eluded easy measurement.
“Patient-reported outcomes are essential, but they do not fully capture what’s happening physiologically or behaviorally in daily life,” says Fatma Gunturkun, PhD, a senior biostatistician and data science manager at Stanford’s Quantitative Sciences Unit (QSU) and the study’s first author. “That is a challenge when trying to understand the condition and evaluate whether a treatment is working.”
The research grew out of STOP-PASC, a randomized, blinded, placebo-controlled trial at Stanford testing whether a 15-day course of nirmatrelvir-ritonavir — the drug sold as Paxlovid — could alleviate long COVID symptoms. The main trial found no benefit over placebo. But embedded within it was an exploratory substudy: 94 participants enrolled in the substudy and received watches, and 50 met the wear-time and data-completeness criteria for analysis.
Gunturkun led the analysis with QSU colleagues Haley Hedlin, PhD, and Bren Botzheim, MS, while senior author Linda Geng, MD, PhD, helped shape the study’s concept and interpretation. The team analyzed wearable data for signals invisible to standard clinical assessment, tracking step counts, activity levels, resting and walking heart rate, heart rate variability, and blood oxygen saturation, each examined separately during daytime and nighttime hours.
The treatment comparison mirrored the main trial: No significant biometric differences emerged between the Paxlovid and placebo groups. But when the researchers looked across the full cohort, something more revealing came into focus.
Participants clustered into distinct trajectory groups based on their activity and heart rate patterns, and those clusters mapped onto their symptom profiles in telling ways. Participants with lower daytime physical activity reported more severe fatigue, shortness of breath, and cardiopulmonary symptoms. Those with higher nighttime activity, which may reflect disrupted sleep or restless rest, showed a different pattern, with more gastrointestinal complaints. A subgroup characterized by high peak nighttime activity reported the broadest symptom burden, including fatigue, body aches, and cardiovascular symptoms.
Fatma Gunturkun, PhD, collaborates with fellow author Haley Hedlin, PhD, and their team member, Blake Shaw, MS.
“The wearable data helped make that heterogeneity visible,” Gunturkun says. “Long COVID is not one uniform condition. The lived experience varies widely.”
That heterogeneity has long complicated both research and treatment. Because long COVID symptoms fluctuate and because no reliable biomarker exists, clinical trials have struggled to define endpoints and detect treatment effects. Wearable data, Gunturkun argues, could change that calculus, not by replacing patient reports, but by layering objective, real-world measures on top of them.
“These are objective proxies for symptoms that patients live with every day but that are difficult to quantify during a single clinic visit,” she says. In future trials, continuous wearable data could track whether a therapy improves daily function, activity tolerance, or physiologic stability, and might detect treatment response earlier, with less reporting bias.
Fatma Gunturkun, PhD, analyzes wearable data with Senior Biostatistician Haley Hedlin, PhD.
The QSU’s role was central to making the analysis work. Translating raw sensor output from a consumer device into meaningful, interpretable trajectories required advanced statistical methods, including trajectory and clustering models that let subgroups emerge from the data rather than being defined in advance.
The study’s sample size of 50 participants means its subgroup findings are hypothesis-generating, not definitive. Gunturkun is clear-eyed about what comes next: validation in larger, more diverse cohorts, and integration of wearable data with patient-reported outcomes, clinical records, and biological biomarkers.
“In the long term, I see wearable biomarkers becoming a core part of medical research, especially for chronic and fluctuating conditions,” she says. “They can move us from occasional snapshots toward continuous, real-world measurement of health, function, and treatment response.”
For long COVID patients, that shift can’t come soon enough.
Adults with sickle cell disease have long faced a fragmented care system that can leave them without a consistent medical home. Stanford physicians Giselle Salmasi, MD, and May Chien, MD, are changing that — building a comprehensive program that gives patients coordinated care, access to emerging therapies, and longer lives.
Long COVID looks different in every patient, which makes it nearly impossible to study and treat. Stanford data scientists are now using data from smartwatches to track how symptoms evolve over time and test which interventions actually help. Data Science Manager and lead author Fatma Gunturkun shares what they’re finding, and what it could mean for the millions still searching for answers.
When transplant nephrologist Patrick Ahearn, MD, and his wife, Peggy Bui, MD, learned that their baby had a rare, life-threatening genetic condition, they did what physician-parents do: They started searching for a cure. With the help of Stanford colleagues, they may have found one — and a path that could be replicated for other rare genetic diseases.
For Latha Palaniappan, MD, the elevated diabetes risk facing Asian and Asian American patients isn’t just a research question. It’s personal. ADVANCE, her new Stanford precision medicine hub, is investigating why these populations develop diabetes at higher rates, and often at lower body weights, than conventional models predict, and building the science to do something about it.
Every clinical study begins with an idea. Getting it off the ground is another story. The Department of Medicine’s Clinical Research Hub is the team that steps in when a promising study hits a wall, offering hands-on support with regulatory hurdles, study design, recruitment, and more.
IgG4-RD can look like cancer, infection, or any number of autoimmune conditions, leaving patients like Yasuko bouncing between specialists for years without answers. For Yasuko, reaching Stanford rheumatologist Matthew Baker, MD, one of the world’s leading IgG4-RD experts, meant not just a diagnosis, but a doctor who listened, involved her in decisions, and took a personal investment in her care.
Stanford’s student-run free clinics have long been a cornerstone of community care — but a new partnership with Samaritan House is taking them further. The collaboration is expanding access for underserved patients while giving medical students things no classroom can offer: real experience, real responsibility, and real stakes.
After building and selling a biotech company, Narges Baniasadi, PhD, could have continued climbing Silicon Valley’s corporate ladder. Instead, she returned to Stanford to launch Emergence, an entrepreneurship program that helps founders build companies tackling some of society’s toughest health challenges. The program is training a new generation of innovators to pursue both purpose and profit.
Margaret, 67, once faced a 14-week wait and a 45-minute drive to Palo Alto just to see a pulmonary specialist. Today she gets that same care close to home, as part of Stanford Pulmonary, Allergy, and Critical Care Medicine’s decade-long push to bring subspecialty expertise into the East Bay, building the fastest-growing service line in Stanford Health Care.
For patients recovering from a serious illness or surgery, the gap between hospital care and what comes next can be dangerous. Stanford Health Care is closing that gap at St. Rose Hospital in Hayward, which is the first facility of its kind to house both a skilled nursing unit and an acute care hospital under one roof, developed in partnership with Alameda Health System.
Asians make up 60% of the world’s population but represent just 10% of genetic databases and 10% of clinical trials. For Latha Palaniappan, MD, that gap is personal. Her father died of heart disease at 39 without a single traditional risk factor. It is why she helped build the Accelerate Innovation in Diabetes LeVeraging Unique PAthways iN Asians (ADVANCE) program.
The Stanford initiative brings together physicians, geneticists, data scientists, and engineers to study how diabetes and cardiovascular disease look different across Asian populations. By examining South Asian, East Asian, and other subgroups separately rather than averaging data together, the team is uncovering patterns that standard research has long missed.
ADVANCE’s first aim addresses a gap in type 1 diabetes testing: some people test negative for known autoantibodies, making diagnosis more difficult. Researchers are searching for novel autoantibodies in Asian and Asian American populations, and have identified early candidates that now require validation in a larger group of participants. The program’s second aim investigates why type 2 diabetes can develop at a normal body weight in some Asian and Asian American individuals, while its third aim examines the biological pathways the two forms of diabetes share, as well as where they differ.
Latha Palaniappan, MD.
“Precision health is important because medicine is not one size fits all,” Palaniappan says. “The only way we will be able to take better care of our patients is by understanding more fully our world population and the variation that exists.”
To tackle this challenge, the ADVANCE team deploys an impressive tool kit: genomic sequencing, proteomics, metabolomics, continuous glucose monitors, and artificial intelligence. Researcher Ruoqi Liu is developing large language models to help scientists move through complex data faster. Work with glucose wearables has already revealed that a simple curve pattern could one day replace costly diagnostic tests. As Stanford geneticist Mike Snyder explains, “Right now, those tests cost thousands of dollars. If we could do it for a very cheap $5 test, that’d be amazing.”
With a biobank of 10,000 Asian participants now established, ADVANCE is building the evidence base to transform care for Asian communities and beyond.
For Latha Palaniappan, MD, the elevated diabetes risk facing Asian and Asian American patients isn’t just a research question. It’s personal. ADVANCE, her new Stanford precision medicine hub, is investigating why these populations develop diabetes at higher rates, and often at lower body weights, than conventional models predict, and building the science to do something about it.
Adults with sickle cell disease have long faced a fragmented care system that can leave them without a consistent medical home. Stanford physicians Giselle Salmasi, MD, and May Chien, MD, are changing that — building a comprehensive program that gives patients coordinated care, access to emerging therapies, and longer lives.
Margaret, 67, once faced a 14-week wait and a 45-minute drive to Palo Alto just to see a pulmonary specialist. Today she gets that same care close to home, as part of Stanford Pulmonary, Allergy, and Critical Care Medicine’s decade-long push to bring subspecialty expertise into the East Bay, building the fastest-growing service line in Stanford Health Care.
IgG4-RD can look like cancer, infection, or any number of autoimmune conditions, leaving patients like Yasuko bouncing between specialists for years without answers. For Yasuko, reaching Stanford rheumatologist Matthew Baker, MD, one of the world’s leading IgG4-RD experts, meant not just a diagnosis, but a doctor who listened, involved her in decisions, and took a personal investment in her care.
Long COVID looks different in every patient, which makes it nearly impossible to study and treat. Stanford data scientists are now using data from smartwatches to track how symptoms evolve over time and test which interventions actually help. Data Science Manager and lead author Fatma Gunturkun shares what they’re finding, and what it could mean for the millions still searching for answers.
For patients recovering from a serious illness or surgery, the gap between hospital care and what comes next can be dangerous. Stanford Health Care is closing that gap at St. Rose Hospital in Hayward, which is the first facility of its kind to house both a skilled nursing unit and an acute care hospital under one roof, developed in partnership with Alameda Health System.
After building and selling a biotech company, Narges Baniasadi, PhD, could have continued climbing Silicon Valley’s corporate ladder. Instead, she returned to Stanford to launch Emergence, an entrepreneurship program that helps founders build companies tackling some of society’s toughest health challenges. The program is training a new generation of innovators to pursue both purpose and profit.
When transplant nephrologist Patrick Ahearn, MD, and his wife, Peggy Bui, MD, learned that their baby had a rare, life-threatening genetic condition, they did what physician-parents do: They started searching for a cure. With the help of Stanford colleagues, they may have found one — and a path that could be replicated for other rare genetic diseases.
Stanford’s student-run free clinics have long been a cornerstone of community care — but a new partnership with Samaritan House is taking them further. The collaboration is expanding access for underserved patients while giving medical students things no classroom can offer: real experience, real responsibility, and real stakes.
Every clinical study begins with an idea. Getting it off the ground is another story. The Department of Medicine’s Clinical Research Hub is the team that steps in when a promising study hits a wall, offering hands-on support with regulatory hurdles, study design, recruitment, and more.
Promising research ideas are rarely what hold studies back.
More often, the obstacles are operational. Contract negotiations can take months, regulatory requirements can overwhelm busy clinicians, and investigators interested in clinical trials may not know where to start, according to Enrique Menendez, director of operations for the Department of Medicine’s Clinical Research Hub.
This is where the Department of Medicine’s Clinical Research Hub, or CRH, comes in. CRH’s mission is to accelerate research and help investigators navigate the operational hurdles that can delay studies.
Established from the former Stanford Center for Clinical Research, the 49-person Clinical Research Hub works behind the scenes to help investigators move promising studies forward. The team supports more than 60 active projects and provides expertise in study startup, contracting, regulatory submissions, clinical trial operations, and research staffing.
The examples below highlight how CRH is helping researchers move studies from conception to execution.
Contract negotiations are often one of the longest delays in launching a clinical study.
According to Marco Perez, MD, medical director of Stanford’s Clinical Coordinating Center, contract negotiations alone often take six to nine months before a study can begin. That timeline is common across academic medicine and can delay research long before the first participant enrolls.
A recent collaboration with Apple showed what can happen when those barriers are reduced.
The project built on Stanford’s relationship with Apple, which began with the Apple Heart Study. That landmark study enrolled more than 400,000 participants and helped validate the Apple Watch’s ability to detect atrial fibrillation. Years later, when Stanford and Apple began planning a new study, both organizations agreed to prioritize the effort.
Perez says dedicated startup, legal, and operational teams worked directly with one another to resolve questions and move negotiations forward. Rather than waiting weeks for responses to move back and forth between organizations, both sides maintained direct lines of communication and focused resources on the project.
The result was a fully executed contract in roughly six weeks. “This timeline is practically unheard of for a study of that scale,” Menendez reflects. The experience is now helping inform a new startup process that CRH hopes to apply to future research partnerships, he adds.
Not every request that reaches CRH involves a clinical trial.
The team has helped clinicians pursue something called “compassionate-use requests” for patients who have exhausted available treatment options. These requests seek FDA permission to use experimental drugs or devices that have not yet been approved for a particular condition.
“These are often situations where there are no good alternatives left,” Perez says.
Menendez says CRH has supported several compassionate-use requests during the past year. The process requires extensive paperwork, regulatory expertise, and direct communication with federal regulators. CRH staff help prepare submissions, coordinate documentation, and work directly with the FDA to move requests forward.
The work falls outside traditional clinical research. Menendez describes it as a way to use the team’s expertise to help clinicians navigate a complex process while providing patients access to potential treatments that otherwise might not be available.
The Clinical Research Hub team works behind the scenes to help investigators move promising studies forward.
Clinical trials can be daunting, even for experienced investigators.
Perez says researchers often have the scientific expertise needed to pursue important questions but lack the infrastructure required to launch and manage a complex study. Rather than taking over a project, Perez says, CRH serves as a partner in the process, helping investigators map what is needed and connect them with the expertise required to move forward.
“A lot of academics don’t realize they can run clinical trials,” Perez says. “That’s exactly what we do. We help them get started.”
He points to a researcher with a successful career in epidemiology who was approached by a sponsor about leading a major clinical trial. Although the investigator had never conducted a clinical trial, CRH was able to provide startup expertise, regulatory support, and operational leadership needed to launch the study.
Perez says the same support can benefit seasoned investigators managing increasingly complex projects. The goal, he says, is to allow researchers to focus on the science and patient care while CRH helps navigate the operational demands of running a study.
Menendez says he regularly encounters investigators who describe studies they never pursued because the process seemed too complicated or burdensome. Those conversations, he says, are exactly why CRH exists: to give investigators a place to start, a team to call, and a path forward.
“You could have just asked me,” he says.
Stanford’s student-run free clinics have long been a cornerstone of community care — but a new partnership with Samaritan House is taking them further. The collaboration is expanding access for underserved patients while giving medical students things no classroom can offer: real experience, real responsibility, and real stakes.
For patients recovering from a serious illness or surgery, the gap between hospital care and what comes next can be dangerous. Stanford Health Care is closing that gap at St. Rose Hospital in Hayward, which is the first facility of its kind to house both a skilled nursing unit and an acute care hospital under one roof, developed in partnership with Alameda Health System.
After building and selling a biotech company, Narges Baniasadi, PhD, could have continued climbing Silicon Valley’s corporate ladder. Instead, she returned to Stanford to launch Emergence, an entrepreneurship program that helps founders build companies tackling some of society’s toughest health challenges. The program is training a new generation of innovators to pursue both purpose and profit.
Margaret, 67, once faced a 14-week wait and a 45-minute drive to Palo Alto just to see a pulmonary specialist. Today she gets that same care close to home, as part of Stanford Pulmonary, Allergy, and Critical Care Medicine’s decade-long push to bring subspecialty expertise into the East Bay, building the fastest-growing service line in Stanford Health Care.
For Latha Palaniappan, MD, the elevated diabetes risk facing Asian and Asian American patients isn’t just a research question. It’s personal. ADVANCE, her new Stanford precision medicine hub, is investigating why these populations develop diabetes at higher rates, and often at lower body weights, than conventional models predict, and building the science to do something about it.
IgG4-RD can look like cancer, infection, or any number of autoimmune conditions, leaving patients like Yasuko bouncing between specialists for years without answers. For Yasuko, reaching Stanford rheumatologist Matthew Baker, MD, one of the world’s leading IgG4-RD experts, meant not just a diagnosis, but a doctor who listened, involved her in decisions, and took a personal investment in her care.
Adults with sickle cell disease have long faced a fragmented care system that can leave them without a consistent medical home. Stanford physicians Giselle Salmasi, MD, and May Chien, MD, are changing that — building a comprehensive program that gives patients coordinated care, access to emerging therapies, and longer lives.
When transplant nephrologist Patrick Ahearn, MD, and his wife, Peggy Bui, MD, learned that their baby had a rare, life-threatening genetic condition, they did what physician-parents do: They started searching for a cure. With the help of Stanford colleagues, they may have found one — and a path that could be replicated for other rare genetic diseases.
Long COVID looks different in every patient, which makes it nearly impossible to study and treat. Stanford data scientists are now using data from smartwatches to track how symptoms evolve over time and test which interventions actually help. Data Science Manager and lead author Fatma Gunturkun shares what they’re finding, and what it could mean for the millions still searching for answers.
Every clinical study begins with an idea. Getting it off the ground is another story. The Department of Medicine’s Clinical Research Hub is the team that steps in when a promising study hits a wall, offering hands-on support with regulatory hurdles, study design, recruitment, and more.