One woman's hard pivot after receiving a devastating diagnosis
Part 2 of the TED Radio Hour episode Approaches to life: Improvise, pivot or plan
When Sonia Vallabh learned she has the genetic mutation for prion disease, she and her husband dropped everything to change careers. Today, they lead a Harvard/MIT lab searching for a cure.
About Sonia Vallabh
Sonia Vallabh runs a prion research laboratory at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard alongside her husband, Eric Vallabh Minikel. Originally trained as a lawyer and transportation engineer, respectively, the two shifted into biomedical research after learning in 2011 that Vallabh inherited a mutation that causes genetic prion disease: a rapidly fatal, currently untreatable neurodegenerative disease that typically strikes in midlife.
They recieved their doctoral degrees in Biological and Biomedical Sciences from Harvard. Outside of the lab, Sonia Vallabh also co-runs the scientific nonprofit Prion Alliance.
This segment of TED Radio Hour was produced by Rachel Faulkner White and edited by Sanaz Meshkinpour. You can follow us on Facebook @TEDRadioHour and email us at TEDRadioHour@npr.org.
Web Resources
Related TED Bio: Sonia Vallabh
Related TED Talk: The world's rarest diseases — and how they impact everyone
Related TED Talk: Are life-saving medicines hiding in the world's coldest places?
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