Columns

This past Saturday, Fedex brought a small unassuming box to the porch of my home. It didn’t take me long to open it and find Vertex’s newest drug, Orkambi, wrapped in its white and lime green colored box. Inside lay foil wrapped pills neatly labelled Sunday through Monday to…

On Thursday, July 2, the Food and Drug Administration made the announcement that Orkambi had been approved for people with cystic fibrosis who are age twelve and older with two copies of the F508del mutation. The announcement was followed by a swirling of excitement through the CF community and…

Cystic fibrosis is a complex genetic disease that slowly takes the breath of those who have it by eroding the function of their lungs over time. At the core of this erosion is a diverse community of bacteria competing to assert dominance in the lung, inflicting chronic exacerbations that need…

Cystic Fibrosis is not a disease new to modern history. It is speculated that people have died from the disease for hundreds if not thousands of years. If cystic fibrosis, which is terminal in the majority of patients, is in fact thousands of years old, how then has it persisted…

My past few articles have touched upon the application of stem cells for the treatment of cystic fibrosis (CF), and while some of these treatments demonstrate great promise for the future of CF, it is important to establish more necessary discourse. With my past articles discussing Embryonic Stem Cells (ESCs),…

The selection of articles I chose for this week is an attempt to capture recent events, along with one older article, showcasing the range of articles relating to the science and increased awareness being brought to the CF community ‘Salty Girls’ photo Series Challenges Notions of Beauty and Cystic Fibrosis…