生物化学原理教学（杨荣武）Meridian Magazine.pdfVIP

Meridian Magazine : : Print M E R I D I A N M A G A Z I N E BYU Poli Sci Professor Publishes Medical Journal Article about Possible Cystic Fibrosis Treatment Her two sons suffer from the disease; next step, clinical trials PROVO, Utah -Recently Brigham Young University political science professor Valerie Hudson will publish a scientific article in a medical journal advocating a new approach to treating cystic fibrosis. Inspired by her research, a clinical trial testing the approach is underway in Germany, with an American team ready to begin a similar trial as soon as funding is secured. The mother of two boys diagnosed with cystic fibrosis, Hudson grew impatient with the rate of medical research on her sons fatal hereditary disease and wanted more information than health care professionals had to give. So the professor, who teaches the graduate students in her research methods class that research acumen can open doors in any realm of knowledge, taught herself human physiology and molecular biology from scratch. Although she didnt plan to, along the way she came up with a new understanding of the way cystic fibrosis attacks the lungs and digestive tract, which pointed to a novel therapy. If funding can be acquired and subsequent clinical trials bear out her hypothesis, it could mean immediate alleviation of many of the diseases symptoms at a fraction of the cost of current treatments. Its unglamorous, its old, its unpatentable; nobody is going to get intellectual property rights off of it so nobodys going to make a fortune, said Hudson.So most researchers want nothing to do with the ideas of the person they view as the wacky political science woman out in Utah. It is that inexpensiveness and Hudsons unorthodox credentials that she believes have caused the traditional cystic fibrosis research community to turn up its collective nose at her work, published in this weeks issue of Free Radical Biology and Medicine, and, without