Health

Harvard faculty members comprise almost 20 percent of the 47 scientists nationally whose promising and innovative work was today recognized with the announcement of two grant programs through the National…

Two scientists who discovered that specific types of human papillomavirus, or HPV, cause cancer of the cervix received the 20th annual Warren Alpert Foundation Scientific Prize on Sept. 15. As part of the day’s celebration, the prize winners Harald zur Hausen and Lutz Gissmann — both professors at the German Cancer Research Center in Heidelberg — delivered talks at a symposium in Harvard Medical School’s New Research Building (NRB).

The Immune Disease Institute has received a two-year, $150,000 award from the Annenberg Foundation to support its ongoing work in international health. The funds will support efforts to combine basic…

Gary Ruvkun, a Harvard Medical School genetics professor in the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) Center for Computational and Integrative Biology, is one of three scientists named co-recipients of the 2008…

The Harvard Initiative for Global Health (HIGH) has been selected to receive a prestigious $400,000 Framework Programs for Global Health grant from the National Institutes of Health’s Fogarty International Center.…

On a hill in South Africa’s KwaZulu Natal province, near the hall where Nelson Mandela delivered his last speech before prison and the station where Mahatma Gandhi was tossed off a train to begin his life’s work, stands Edendale Hospital.

“I just want to see how bad things are in the clinic,” Jennifer Furin said. “It’s a ‘doctor fear’ that someone is bleeding out while I’m standing here eating chocolate.”

What does Jack LaLanne have in common with a Jamaican lizard? Like the ageless fitness guru, the lizards greet each new day with vigorous push-ups. That’s according to a new study showing that male Anolis lizards engage in impressive displays of reptilian strength — push-ups, head bobs, and threatening extension of a colorful neck flap called a “dewlap” — to defend their territory at dawn and dusk.

In a feat of biological prestidigitation likely to turn the field of regenerative medicine on its head, Harvard Stem Cell Institute (HSCI) co-director Doug Melton and postdoctoral fellow Qiao “Joe” Zhou report having achieved what has long been a dream and ultimate goal of developmental biologists — directly turning a fully formed adult cell into another kind of fully formed, functioning adult cell.

Just five years after the Human Genome Project announced it had decoded the first human DNA, the era of personal genetics is dawning, bringing with it not just the promise of targeted, personalized medicine and a new level of self-knowledge, but also a host of ethical, legal, and practical issues. A new project out of a Harvard Medical School genetics lab is trying to make sure we’re prepared to deal with the potential benefits and pitfalls arising from these issues.

Some of the most challenging obstacles limiting the reprogramming of mature human cells into stem cells may not seem quite as daunting in the near future. Two independent research groups,…

Someday doctors may be able to use a blood test to confirm within minutes, instead of hours, if a patient is having a heart attack, allowing more rapid treatment that…

The Harvard Catalyst, an unprecedented pan-University collaborative effort committed to harnessing the human, technological, and fiscal resources of Harvard and its academic healthcare centers (AHCs) to reduce the burden of…

Two scientists who discovered that specific types of human papillomavirus, or HPV, cause cancer of the cervix will receive the 20th annual Warren Alpert Foundation Scientific Prize on Sept. 15.…

Los Angeles-based philanthropists Eli and Edythe Broad today declared the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT  an unprecedented success as an experiment in science and philanthropy, and announced that they…

Researchers at the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT have been chosen to receive a six-year, $86M grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to identify and develop molecular…

Samuel Kou, whose modeling of nanoscale processes within molecules has opened up important new frontiers at the intersection of statistics and chemistry, has been appointed professor of statistics in Harvard…

In  a feat of biological prestidigitation likely to turn the field of regenerative medicine on its head, Harvard Stem Cell Institute (HSCI) co-director Doug Melton and post doctoral fellow Qiao…

When the baby vomited again, Gail Melton knew something was seriously wrong with her second child, a son she and her husband, Doug Melton, had named Sam. She phoned Doug…

What does ageless fitness guru Jack LaLanne have in common with a Jamaican lizard? Like LaLanne, the lizards greet each day with vigorous push-ups. That’s according to a new study…

Researchers are collecting vast amounts of diverse genomic data with ever-increasing speed, but effective ways to visualize these data in an integrated manner have lagged behind the ability to generate them. To address this growing need, researchers at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard have developed the Integrative Genomics Viewer (IGV), a novel and freely available visualization tool that helps users simultaneously integrate and analyze different types of genomic data, and gives them the flexibility to zoom in on a specific genomic region of interest or to pan out for a broad, whole-genome view.

Less than 27 months after announcing that he had institutional permission to attempt the creation of patient- and disease-specific stem cell lines, Harvard Stem Cell Institute (HSCI) principal faculty member Kevin Eggan proclaimed the effort a success — though politically imposed restrictions and scientific advances prompted him to use a different technique than originally planned.

Harvard Stem Cell Institute (HSCI) researcher George Q. Daley, associate director of the Stem Cell Program at Children’s Hospital Boston, has with HSCI colleagues Chad Cowan and Konrad Hochedlinger of Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) produced a robust new collection of disease-specific stem cell lines, all of which were developed using the new induced pluripotent stem cell (iPS) technique. The work is described in a paper published in the Aug. 7 online edition of the journal Cell.

Harvard Stem Cell Institute (HSCI) researcher George Q. Daley, associate director of the Stem Cell Program at Children’s Hospital Boston, has with HSCI colleagues Chad Cowan and Konrad Hochedlinger of Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) produced a robust new collection of disease-specific stem cell lines, all of which were developed using the new induced pluripotent stem cell (iPS) technique. The work is described in a paper published in the Aug. 7 online edition of the journal Cell.

Recently (Jan. 6-21), 15 Harvard and 16 Brazilian students participated in an intensive experience: the first Harvard-Brazil Collaborative Course on Infectious Diseases. The course, which was offered by the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) and the Santa Casa de Misericórdia de São Paulo Medical School (FCMSCSP) with the support of the Harvard University Brazil Studies Program at the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies (DRCLAS), included lectures and informal discussions and visits to clinics, hospitals, laboratories, and community programs.

In experiments using blood cells from human patients with diabetes and other autoimmune disorders, Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) researchers have confirmed the mechanism behind a potential new therapy for type…

A study by researchers at the Joslin Diabetes Center has shown that a protein known for its role in inducing bone growth can also help promote the development of brown…

Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and Harvard Medical School investigators have found that infusions of a particular bone marrow stem cell appeared to protect gastrointestinal tissue from autoimmune attack in a mouse model.

As poets, songwriters and authors have described, our memories range from misty water-colored recollections to vividly detailed images of the times of our lives. Now, a study led by Harvard…

In a new study, researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) have found that married Indian women who experienced physical and sexual abuse at the hands of their…