Health

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.

Taking aim at the alarming slowdown in the development of new and lifesaving drugs, Harvard Medical School is launching the Initiative in Systems Pharmacology, a comprehensive strategy to transform drug discovery by convening biologists, chemists, pharmacologists, physicists, computer scientists, and clinicians to explore together how drugs work in complex systems.

Fourteen Harvard surgeons, supported by 36 anesthesiologists, radiologists, nurses, and other medical personnel at Harvard-affiliated Brigham and Women’s Hospital, worked for 12 hours to give a new pair of hands to a 65-year-old Revere man who lost both arms below the elbows and both legs below the knees as a result of a septic infection in 2002.

Research into the effects of last year’s massive BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico highlights the flexibility of the community of microbes living in the ocean’s depths.

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.

A new Harvard Medical School topic helps to train future physicians in the expanding field of global health.

A professor studies how the structure of large proteins influences how we feel heat, examining how the proteins behave and interact with molecules around them.

The Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard has been awarded a $12.3 million, four-year grant from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency to develop a treatment for sepsis, a commonly fatal bloodstream infection.

Two decades after the Americans with Disabilities Act went into effect, people with disabilities continue to face difficulties meeting major social needs, including obtaining appropriate access to health care facilities and services.

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.

In a new research paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Early Edition online, Harvard-affiliated researchers identify a transcriptional biomarker that may assist in the monitoring of Huntington’s disease activity and in the evaluation of new medications.

With the advent of new techniques and anti-rejection drugs, organ transplantation stands on the threshold of a new era, where once-radical surgeries such as face transplants will seem routine, says Bohdan Pomahac, the Brigham and Women’s Hospital surgeon and Harvard Medical School professor who led recent face transplant surgeries.

Looking at large samples, an international consortium — that included involvement by scientists at the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT and Harvard-affiliated Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) — has identified 10 genetic risk factors that contribute to either schizophrenia or bipolar disorder and discovered strong evidence for three genes being implicated in both diseases.

A Harvard study of how mice respond to scent cues from potential mates, competitors, and nearby predators has laid a foundation for further investigations that may eventually lead to a greater understanding of social recognition in the animal brain, with implications for a host of human disorders ranging from autism to post-traumatic stress disorder.

Author and surgeon Atul Gawande says effective medicine requires high-quality care and solid research. But it also requires a willingness to adapt.

Health officials from China and the United States gathered at Harvard Medical School to examine common challenges and solutions as the two global giants seek to reform national health care systems to improve access and care, while lowering costs.

In 1954, Harvard surgeons at the Brigham performed the first successful organ transfer, a kidney exchanged between twins, opening a major medical field, and giving life and hope to thousands of patients.

A new four-year, $20 million grant from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) will enable Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) researchers to evaluate the impact and cost-effectiveness of a unique combination of HIV prevention strategies in Botswana.

The Healthy Eating Plate, a visual guide that provides a blueprint for eating a healthy meal, was unveiled today by Harvard nutrition experts.

A new three-year, $12 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation will support a Harvard School of Public Health effort to significantly improve maternal health in developing countries.

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.

Harvard researchers have used genetic analysis to confirm that the Appalachian tiger swallowtail butterfly arose through hybridization of two other species, the Canadian and Eastern tiger swallowtails, highlighting a rare case of speciation through hybridization in animals.

Children who live in households where they are exposed to tobacco smoke miss more days of school than do children living in smoke-free homes, a new nationwide study confirms.

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.

The green anole lizard is an agile and active creature, and so are elements of its genome. This genomic agility and other new clues have emerged from the full sequencing of the lizard’s genome and may offer insights into how the genomes of humans, mammals, and their reptilian counterparts have evolved since mammals and reptiles parted ways 320 million years ago.

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.

The global obesity epidemic has been escalating for decades, yet long-term prevention efforts have barely begun and are inadequate, according to a new paper from international public health experts published in the Aug. 25 issue of the journal The Lancet.

Two Harvard-led research teams report identifying a critical protein that Ebola virus exploits to cause deadly infections. The protein target is an essential element through which the virus enters living cells to cause disease.

Harvard researchers say the rise of cooking likely occurred more than 1.9 million years ago and bestowed on human ancestors a gift of time in the form of hours each day not spent eating.

A novel imaging probe developed by a Harvard-led team of investigators at Massachusetts General Hospital may make it possible to diagnose accurately a dangerous infection of the heart valves.