Heart disease causes in the United States. Now, a University of Colorado researcher says she’s found promising clues that could help treat it, but the source of her discoveries might make your skin crawl.
is a professor of molecular, cellular and developmental biology at CU Boulder. Her insights come from research conducted on a rather unwieldy animal to keep in your laboratory – pythons. Leinwand and her team observe Burmese pythons – snakes that go weeks or months between meals without eating. She has studied pythons for decades and she recently .
Erin O’Toole spoke with Lienwand about her research and learned that, while humans and snakes have very different physiologies, the way snakes eat in the wild may inspire new treatments for heart disease and other metabolic conditions in people.