How do placebos work?

How do CARs work?

Second-generation chimeric antigen receptors (CARs) are powerful tools to redirect antigen-specific T cells independently of HLA-restriction. Recent clinical studies evaluating CD19-targeted T cells in patients with B-cell malignancies demonstrate the potency of CAR-engineered T cells. With results from 28 subjects enrolled by five centers conducting studies in patients with chronic lymphocytic...

How Do Emotions Work?

Have you ever felt happy, sad, angry, or afraid? How about jealous, ashamed, or embarrassed? Almost everybody has these different emotions from time to time, and they can have a big effect on the way people think and act. Because emotions have such a big effect on people’s lives, scientists have spent a lot of time trying to understand how they work. In this paper, we will talk about how emotio...

How do enzymes work?

The principle of transition-state stabilization asserts that the occurrence of enzymic catalysis is equivalent to saying that an enzyme binds the transition state much more strongly than it binds the ground-state reactants. An outline of the origin and gradual acceptance of this idea is presented, and elementary transition-state theory is reviewed. It is pointed out that a misconception about t...

How do psychiatric drugs work?

How do enzymes really work?

My understanding is that “reflections” can cover a multitude of sins. I have previously written a brief history of my career, and do not want to duplicate that exposition (1). Instead, this “reflection” will trace a primary focus of my laboratory for many decades, namely how do enzymes achieve their remarkable catalytic efficiency? (Indeed this has been a focal point of the field of biochemistr...