Duke Kannapolis News

MURDOCK Study Celebrates 10th Anniversary

Ten years to the day after she became the first participant in the MURDOCK Study, Bobbie Beam returned to the North Carolina Research Campus in Kannapolis on Saturday, Feb. 16 to celebrate the first decade of the landmark Duke CTSI study.

“It’s a wonderful thing,” said Beam, a retired nurse who joined hundreds of MURDOCK Study participants and community partners at the celebration. “I’m happy to be back.”

What Rivalry? Duke, UNC Collaborate at North Carolina Research Campus

It took Summer Goodson, PhD, nearly a year to find six men genetically qualified to participate in a sperm function study at the UNC Nutrition Research Institute (NRI) in Kannapolis.


Male fertility is still a sensitive subject, said Goodson, a post-doctoral research associate at the NRI, making it tough to rely on traditional recruitment methods like fliers and advertisements.