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90 stories tagged ‘Harvard Stem Cell Institute’
Two Harvard Stem Cell Institute researchers have identified a protein in the blood of mice and humans that may prove to be the first effective treatment for the form of age-related heart failure that affects millions of Americans, a study says.
Potential diabetes breakthrough
Researchers at the Harvard Stem Cell Institute have discovered a hormone that holds promise for a dramatically more effective treatment of type 2 diabetes, a metabolic illness afflicting an estimated 26 million Americans.
Using a new, stem cell-based, drug-screening technology that could reinvent and greatly reduce the cost of developing pharmaceuticals, researchers at the Harvard Stem Cell Institute have found a compound that is more effective in protecting the neurons killed in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis than are two drugs that failed in human clinical trials.
Harvard stem cell biologists have proven that it is possible to turn one type of already differentiated neuron into another inside the brain, and their findings may have enormous implications for the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases.
‘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.
Stem cells need recovery time, too
A new study describes the mechanism behind impaired muscle repair during aging and a strategy that may help rejuvenate aging tissue by manipulating the environment in which muscle stem cells reside.
Personalized medicine closer to reality
A consortium of scientists at 20 institutions, led by a principal faculty member at the Harvard Stem Cell Institute, has used stem cells to take a major step toward developing personalized medicine to treat Parkinson’s disease.
Big advance against cystic fibrosis
Harvard stem cell researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital have taken a critical step toward discovering in the relatively near future a drug to control cystic fibrosis, a fatal lung disease that claims about 500 lives each year, with 1,000 new cases diagnosed annually.
Obesity? Diabetes? We’ve been set up
The twin epidemics of obesity and its cousin, diabetes, have been the target of numerous studies at Harvard and its affiliated hospitals and institutions. Harvard researchers have produced a dizzying array of findings on the often related problems.
Funding success, and finding it
Four years ago, Harvard’s Office of Technology Development launched its Accelerator Fund, a $10 million revolving account to be used as a bridge across the “valley” between creation and development. The fund is proving to be just such a bridge.
Stimulating Cells – Doug Melton – Harvard Thinks Big
Doug Melton Thomas Dudley Cabot Professor of the Natural Sciences at Harvard University and co-Director of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute
Age-related effects of MS may prove reversible
In a new study, Harvard stem cell researchers and scientists at the University of Cambridge have found that the age-related degeneration in conditions such as multiple sclerosis (MS) may be reversible.
Gordon Jones, director of the new Harvard Innovation Lab, has ideas on how to foster an entrepreneurial mentality at the country’s oldest university.
Five years after first gaining institutional permission to attempt to produce stem cell lines via somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT), two Harvard researchers and a former Harvard postdoctoral fellow have closed the loop with a flurry of new studies and a commentary in several leading journals.
Two named University Professors
Rebecca M. Henderson of the Harvard Business School and Douglas Melton of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and the Harvard Medical School were named University Professors in recognition of their dedication to teaching and scholarship that crosses academic boundaries.
From skin cells to motor neurons
Harvard stem cell researchers have succeeded in reprogramming adult mouse skin cells directly into the type of motor neurons damaged in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, best known as Lou Gehrig's disease, and spinal muscular atrophy.
He’s an economist, a researcher, and a physician, and he’s about to become provost. On the day (April 15) that President Drew Faust announced that he would be Harvard’s next provost, Alan M. Garber ’76 sat down with the Gazette to talk about his career, his new role, and facilitating connections across traditional academic boundaries as the University evolves for the 21st century.
Stem cells being transfused into post-heart attack patients may not be developing into new heart muscle, but they still appear to be beneficial. Some stem cells in the bone marrow, called c-kit+ cells, appear capable of stimulating adult stem cells already present in the heart to repair damaged tissue.
Harvard stem cell researchers at Children’s Hospital Boston have taken two important steps toward development of a new way of treating melanoma, the most virulent form of skin cancer.
A group of Harvard Stem Cell Institute researchers in the Department of Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology has discovered that excitatory neurons control the positioning of inhibitory neurons in the brain in a process critically important for generating balanced circuitry and proper cortical response.
Two studies prove value of iPS cells
A team of Harvard Stem Cell Institute (HSCI) researchers, in collaboration with scientists at Columbia University, have demonstrated that many iPS cells (stem cells created by reprogramming adult cells) are the equal of human embryonic stem cells in creating human motor neurons, the cells destroyed in a number of neurological diseases, including Parkinson’s.
Adult kidney stem cells found in fish
It has long been a given that adult humans — and mammals in general — lack the capacity to grow new nephrons, the kidney’s delicate blood filtering tubules, which has meant that dialysis, and ultimately kidney transplantation, is the only option for the more than 450,000 Americans who have kidney failure.
Provost Steven E. Hyman, who spurred an expansion of interdisciplinary research at Harvard and has overseen the revitalization of the University’s libraries and many of its museums and cultural institutions, plans to leave his post after nearly a decade.
An interdisciplinary group of leading Harvard geneticists and stem cell researchers has found a new genetic aspect of cell reprogramming that may ultimately help in the fine-tuning of induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS) into specific cell types.
Breakthrough in cell reprogramming
A group of Harvard Stem Cell Institute researchers has made such a significant leap forward in reprogramming human adult cells that HSCI co-director Douglas Melton said the institute will immediately begin using the new method to make patient- and disease-specific induced pluripotent stem cells, known as iPS cells.
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