When his mother sent a text message from Arizona telling him that his father was diagnosed with sepsis, John D. Fryer, Ph.D., knew he had to move quickly.

It was October 2016, and the message arrived less than 48 hours after Dr. Fryer's laboratory learned that its greatest discovery — a discovery about sepsis, no less — would be published in Molecular Psychiatry, one of the world's leading research journals. But the afterglow from the journal's approval disappeared immediately with the reality of his mother's text message.

"As soon as I saw the message, I called my wife, and within two hours, I was on a flight to Arizona," Dr. Fryer says.

Sepsis is a runaway inflammation response to infection. According to the National Institutes of Health, sepsis strikes more than 1 million Americans every year, killing between 28 and 50 percent.

By the time Dr. Fryer arrived in Arizona, the inflammatory response was unstoppable, and his father, Ron, who was also battling end-stage renal disease, was receiving palliative care to make him as comfortable as possible. Over the next few hours, with Dr. Fryer in the hospital room, he slipped into unconsciousness. He died less than 48 hours later.

"I couldn't stop being a scientist and wishing I had been further along in my research, because, maybe, it could have helped my father," Dr. Fryer says. "At the same time, I was glad I knew about sepsis and recognized that I had to leave immediately when I received my mother's message. That was very fortunate, because I got to see my dad before he lost consciousness and have a conversation with him."