PORTLAND, Maine — Van Andel Institute’s J. Andrew Pospisilik, Ph.D., and Maine Medical Center Research Institute’s Joseph Nadeau, Ph.D., have earned a five-year, $9.6 million Transformative Research Award from the National Institutes of Health to answer a set of questions that could fundamentally transform our understanding of health and disease: If you were born multiple times under the exact same circumstances, would you turn out to be the same person each time? And if not, what implications could the differences have for your health?
Although it may sound like science fiction, the answers could revolutionize our understanding of how “probabilistic” variation influences health before birth and throughout life — and provide insights into new strategies for combating cancer, obesity and a host of other health concerns and diseases. Read more