Sepsis, a life-threatening condition that stems from the body trying to fight off an infection, plagues more than 1.5 million patients a year in the U.S. alone, with one in three deaths recorded in hospitals attributed in part to sepsis. Despite the severity of the condition, which can kill in as little as 12 hours, it takes between two and seven days for most traditional approaches to definitively identify sepsis-causing bacteria in blood infections.

Men are likely to suffer more extensive heart attacks than women. Studies have shown that male sex hormones, such as testosterone, intensify inflammation during an acute heart attack and lead to a larger area of damage. According to a study from the University of Gothenburg, patients treated with medication for benign prostatic hyperplasia at the time of a severe acute heart attack experienced fewer serious complications from the attack.

Andrea Califano began his career as a physicist. But that’s not why he’s now calling cancer a quantum disease. “We’re really just following the data,” says Califano, the Clyde ’56 and Helen Wu Professor of Chemical Biology at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons and head of Biohub, New York.