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192 stories tagged ‘Dana-Farber Cancer Institute’
Hansjörg Wyss doubles his gift
Founding donor Hansjörg Wyss doubled his gift to Harvard’s Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering from $125 million to $250 million to the University to further advance the institute’s pioneering work.
HMS partners with NFL Players Association
he National Football League Players Association (NFLPA) has awarded Harvard Medical School a $100 million grant to create a transformative 10-year initiative — Harvard Integrated Program to Protect and Improve the Health of NFLPA Members.
Mutations drive malignant melanoma
Two mutations that collectively occur in 71 percent of malignant melanoma tumors have been discovered in what Harvard scientists call the “dark matter” of the cancer genome, where cancer-related mutations haven’t been previously found.
Doctor honored for work, leadership
Jane deLima Thomas, a palliative care physician and associate director of the Harvard Palliative Medicine Fellowship Program at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, is one of five U.S. physicians to receive the 2013 Hastings Center Cunniff-Dixon Physician Award.
Some Harvard Medical School junior faculty members are receiving a bit of help at a difficult time in their lives, as they juggle the twin pressures of their demanding, developing careers and the consuming work of raising young families. These junior faculty have been awarded assistance through the Eleanor and Miles Shore 50th Anniversary Fellowship Program.
When Madeline Meehan makes her annual donation to Harvard Community Gifts, she won't just be providing handmade blankets to sick children, she’ll also be helping her mother’s labor of love. This is one of a series of Gazette articles highlighting some of the many initiatives and charities the can be supported through the Harvard Community Gifts campaign.
‘Stem cell tourism’ growing trend
A Harvard panel examined the problem of clinics around the world that provide stem cell treatments for intractable conditions. Although there is no medical evidence of the treatments’ effectiveness, such clinics have drawn thousands of patients from many countries.
Insulin and colon cancer linked
Researchers have found that colorectal cancer survivors whose diet and activity patterns lead to excess amounts of insulin in the blood have a higher risk of cancer recurrence and death from the disease.
Aspirin’s impact on colorectal cancer
Harvard researchers at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute find that aspirin therapy can extend the life of colorectal cancer patients whose tumors carry a mutation in a key gene, but it has no effect on patients who lack the mutation.
Flipping the switch that halts obesity
Flipping a newly discovered molecular switch in white fat cells enabled mice to eat a high-calorie diet without becoming obese or developing the inflammation that causes insulin resistance, report Harvard scientists from Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.
CYCLOPS genes an Achilles’ heel in tumors?
Researchers at Harvard-affiliated Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT used new technology to explore a 19-year-old theory, discovering what may be an Achilles’ heel for cancer cells: essential genes disrupted in the process of becoming cancerous that can be attacked further with drug therapy.
HMS faculty wins Clinical Scientist Development Award
Adam J. Bass, assistant professor in the department of medicine at Harvard Medical School and assistant professor of medicine at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, has won a Doris Duke Charitable Foundation 2012 Clinical Scientist Development Award.
In obesity battle, beige is the new brown
Scientists at Harvard-affiliated Dana-Farber Cancer Institute have isolated a new type of energy-burning fat cell in adult humans, which they say may have therapeutic potential for treating obesity.
When skin cancer cells resist drug treatment
Harvard researchers have found that although tailored drugs can eradicate melanoma cells in the lab, they often produce only partial, temporary responses in patients. Researchers have now learned that normal cells that reside within the tumor, part of the tumor microenvironment, may supply factors that help cancer cells grow and survive despite the presence of anti-cancer drugs.
HMS, Dana-Farber scientists receive 2012 Alpert Prize
HMS faculty Kenneth Anderson, Paul Richardson, and Alfred Goldberg are three of four researchers being honored for their research and development of a pioneering cancer drug.
Using DNA as bricks and mortar
Researchers at Harvard’s Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering have figured out how to use short lengths of DNA as physical, rather than genetic, building blocks, creating letters and other shapes from the molecules in a proof of design that could one day lead to the creation of structures that, among other things, deliver drugs to disease sites.
Unraveling the secrets of the epilepsy diet
Researchers at Harvard Medical School and Harvard-affiliated Dana-Farber Cancer Institute have identified a protein that plays a key role in the long-mysterious effectiveness of an extremely low-calorie, high-fat, low-carbohydrate diet in suppressing epileptic seizures.
The American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) presented Alan D. D'Andrea with the 52nd Annual AACR G.H.A. Clowes Memorial Award for his work in understanding cancer survival and progression.
Insight on triple-negative breast cancer
Scientists from Harvard-affiliated Brigham and Women's Hospital and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and their colleagues have found a genetic marker that predicts which aggressive “triple-negative” breast cancers and certain ovarian cancers are likely to respond to platinum-based chemotherapies.
Two Harvard pediatric cancer researchers at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute (DFCI) and a scientist at Columbia University Medical Center have each received $100,000 Bridge Grants from a private foundation seeking to help make up for declining federal biomedical research funding.
New subtype of ovarian cancer identified
Scientists at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute have identified a subtype of ovarian cancer able to build its own blood vessels, suggesting that such tumors might be especially susceptible to “anti-angiogenic” drugs that block blood vessel formation
Right time for ‘end-of-life’ talk
A study by Harvard-affiliated Dana-Farber Cancer Institute finds that most terminally ill cancer patients discuss end-of-life care with physicians but that such discussions often occur late in their illness.
Reaping benefits of exercise minus the sweat
A team led by researchers at Harvard-affiliated Dana-Farber Cancer Institute has isolated a natural hormone from muscle cells that triggers some of the key health benefits of exercise.
Ninety instructors and junior faculty members at Harvard Medical School have received fellowships from the Eleanor and Miles Shore 50th Anniversary Fellowship Program for Scholars in Medicine. The program provides grants for recipients to hire lab help or to gain protected time by easing clinical duties.
David Rosenthal, who has been director of Harvard University Health Services for 23 years and oversaw both physical and electronic modernization, is stepping down at the end of the academic year.
Researchers at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute are collaborating on a massive, long-term effort to collect and analyze tumor tissue from 10,000 cancer patients annually. The researchers hope the data will enable them to understand better how tumors behave, while providing opportunities to test new therapies.
Relief for stem cell transplant patients
In a study that seems to pivot on a paradox, scientists at Harvard-affiliated Dana-Farber Cancer Institute have used an immune system stimulant as an immune system suppressor to treat a common, often debilitating side effect of donor stem cell transplantation in cancer patients. The effect, in some cases, was profound.
Alleviating radiation sickness
A combination of two drugs may alleviate radiation sickness in people who have been exposed to high levels of radiation, even when the therapy is given a day after the exposure occurred, according to a study led by scientists from Harvard-affiliated Dana-Farber Cancer Institute (DFCI) and Children’s Hospital Boston.
Affordable cancer treatments available
Report reveals that readily available and affordable cancer prevention, treatment, and pain relief interventions could decrease deaths and improve the lives of millions in developing countries.
Scientists at Harvard-afilliated Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and the Broad Institute have found strikingly high levels of a bacterium in colorectal cancers, a sign that it might contribute to the disease and potentially be a key to diagnosing, preventing, and treating it.
Dialing down sickle cell disease
Flipping a single molecular switch can reverse illness in an animal model of sickle cell disease, according to a study by Harvard researchers at Children's Hospital Boston and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.
The battle for medicine’s soul
Author and surgeon Atul Gawande says effective medicine requires high-quality care and solid research. But it also requires a willingness to adapt.
Scientists at Harvard-affiliated Dana-Farber Cancer Institute have successfully disrupted the function of a cancer gene involved in the formation of most human tumors by tampering with the gene’s “on” switch and growth signals, rather than targeting the gene itself.
Advances in type 2 diabetes drugs
Researchers from Harvard-affiliated Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and the Scripps Research Institute in Jupiter, Fla., report they have created prototype drugs having powerful anti-diabetic effects, yet apparently free — at least in mice — of dangerous side effects plaguing some current diabetes medications.
Baruj Benacerraf, Nobel laureate, 90
Baruj Benacerraf, who earned a 1980 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine for his groundbreaking research in immunology and led Dana-Farber Cancer Institute through a period of tremendous growth beginning that year, died in Boston on Aug. 2 at the age of 90.
Harvard researchers at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute (DFCI) have identified a number of cancer genes that endow melanoma tumors with the ability to metastasize, making it possible to predict whether the tumors are likely to spread.
Finding ovarian cancer’s vulnerabilities
In their largest and most comprehensive effort to date, researchers from the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, a Harvard affiliate, examined cells from more than 100 tumors, including 25 ovarian cancer tumors, to unearth the genes upon which cancers depend. They call it Project Achilles.
When estrogen isn’t the culprit
Although it sounds like a case of gender confusion on a molecular scale, the male hormone androgen spurs the growth of some breast tumors in women. In a new study, Harvard scientists at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute provide the first details of the cancer cell machinery that carries out the hormone’s relentless growth orders.
Workers at Harvard’s Biological Laboratories organize a team to raise funds for cancer research, and to support ill colleague Eileen Snow.
A duo of drugs, each targeting a prime survival strategy of tumors, can be safely administered and is potentially more effective than either drug alone for advanced, inoperable melanomas, according to a phase 1 clinical trial led by Harvard investigators at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.
What’s behind aggressive breast cancer
Harvard scientists at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute have identified an overactive network of growth-spurring genes that drive stem-like breast cancer cells enriched in triple-negative breast tumors, a typically aggressive cancer that is highly resistant to current therapies.
With its 360th Commencement, another chapter in Harvard's history draws to a close, as marked by highlights from this year. Reinstallation of ROTC, ongoing innovation in science and humanities, and Wynton Marsalis at Harvard top off some of the year's historical benchmarks.
Harvard-affiliated scientists at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute have discovered new details of how cancer cells escape from tumor suppression mechanisms that normally prevent these damaged cells from multiplying.
An innovative experimental treatment for boosting the effectiveness of blood stem-cell transplants with umbilical cord blood has a favorable safety profile in long-term animal studies, according to Harvard Stem Cell Institute scientists at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, and Children's Hospital Boston.
The improbable appears promising
A section of the AIDS virus' protein envelope once considered an improbable target for a vaccine now appears to be one of the most promising, new research by Harvard-affiliated Dana-Farber Cancer Institute scientists indicates.
Harvard rallies against cancer
Now through April 8, team up with other Harvard faculty and staff members to shut out cancer through Harvard Community Gifts.
Multiple myeloma genome unveiled
Harvard scientists have unveiled the most comprehensive picture to date of the full genetic blueprint of multiple myeloma, a form of blood cancer.
Harvard researchers at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute have identified the root molecular cause of a variety of ills brought on by advanced age, including waning energy, failure of the heart and other organs, and metabolic disorder.
Genes tied to prostate cancer uncovered
For the first time, researchers have laid bare the full genetic blueprint of multiple prostate tumors, uncovering alterations that have never before been detected and offering a deep view of the genetic missteps that underlie the disease.
Life support for medical faculty
Shore Fellowships provide important breathing room for junior faculty members pressed by the demands of work and home life.
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