Duke Research Vies for a Deep Tournament Run

today.duke.edu · Mar 2, 2026 · Collected from GDELT

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As Duke’s basketball teams gear up for ACC and NCAA tournament appearances, the time has also come for another kind of springtime fever: STAT Madness. STAT Madness is a bracket-style tournament to determine the most innovative biomedical research published in the past calendar year. It is organized by the health and medicine news outlet STAT, and the winner is selected through multiple rounds of public voting. This year, four Duke research projects were selected as competitors. Voting for the first round began Monday, March 2nd, with six weeks of rounds culminating in the finals ending April 6th. You can support our researchers on the 2026 STAT Madness website – and you can learn more about each team below. A New Gut Sense A team led by Duke University School of Medicine neurobiologists Diego Bohórquez and M. Maya Kaelberer discovered a previously unknown gut‑brain communication system they called a “neurobiotic sense.” Published in the journal Nature, the research showed that specialized gut cells known as neuropods detected flagellin, a protein released by certain gut bacteria during digestion, and rapidly sent signals to the brain through the vagus nerve. The team demonstrated that this signaling pathway curbed appetite in mice. When the pathway was disrupted, the animals continued eating and gained weight. The study showed that microbes could influence behavior in real time, offering new clues for understanding appetite, obesity, and potentially mental health — by listening to the gut as a sensory organ, not just a digestive one. Artificial Intelligence Tackles Proteins Members of the lab of Pranam Chatterjee, formerly of Pratt School of Engineering, developed an AI‑driven platform that could help target diseases long considered untreatable. Published in the journal Science Advances, the study introduced an algorithm inspired by generative AI models that designed short proteins, called peptides, capable of binding to and destroying other, disease‑causing proteins. Instead of relying on detailed 3D protein structures, the system generated and rapidly screened peptides using only a target’s amino acid sequence. In laboratory tests with collaborators, the algorithm produced peptides that successfully bound to and degraded proteins involved in cancer. With more than 80% of disease‑driving proteins considered undruggable, this AI approach opened the door to future therapies for a variety of diseases. Predicting Mental Health Risk with AI Duke researchers, led by School of Medicine psychiatrist Dr. Jonathan Posner, developed an AI model that predicted which adolescents were likely to develop serious mental health problems before symptoms became severe. In the study published in the journal Nature Medicine, the team analyzed brain and behavioral data from more than 11,000 youths. The AI model predicted escalating psychiatric illness within a year with 84% accuracy. Crucially, a companion model also identified underlying risk factors like sleep problems, family conflict and adverse experiences. With a shortage of mental health specialists, this tool could help pediatricians identify at‑risk teens early using simple questionnaires. That could lead to more timely support, earlier intervention, and a better chance to prevent mental health crises before they take hold. Gene Therapy for Heart Tissue The first successful use of gene therapy to treat heart attack damage in non‑human primates, a major step toward human therapies, was reported by a team led by Pratt School of Engineering biomedical engineer Nenad Bursac. In a study published in the journal Circulation Research, the researchers delivered a gene encoding an engineered bacterial sodium channel directly into damaged heart tissue. In lab‑grown human heart tissues and in macaque monkeys with heart injuries similar to those seen after heart attacks, the therapy restored pumping strength and stabilized heart rhythm, preventing dangerous arrhythmias. Since heart muscle does not naturally regenerate, this leaves millions of heart attack survivors with permanent damage. This approach improved both the electrical and mechanical function of injured hearts using minimally invasive delivery, offering new hope for repairing hearts after heart attacks, rather than merely slowing decline. All of these groundbreaking research projects are supported by federal funding. Learn more about how federally funded Duke Research Saves Lives.