Featured series 
Tag: Children’s Hospital Boston
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Health
A Genetic Cause for Iron Deficiency
The discovery of a gene for a rare form of inherited iron deficiency may provide clues to iron deficiency in the general population – particularly iron deficiency that doesn’t respond to iron supplements. The finding was published online by the journal Nature Genetics on April 13. Iron deficiency is the most common nutritional deficiency and…
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Health
Cancer stem cells can be targeted for destruction
It’s increasingly believed among scientists that nearly every cancer contains small populations of highly dangerous cells — cancer stem cells — that can initiate a cancer, drive its progression, and create endless copies of themselves. On the theory that targeting these cells might be an effective therapeutic strategy, researchers around the world have begun isolating…
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Health
Stem cell lines created from discarded IVF embryos
Human embryos that are discarded every day as medical waste from in vitro fertilization (IVF) clinics could be an important source of stem cells for research, according to a team of Harvard Stem Cell Institute researchers at Children’s Hospital Boston. Some of the embryos created during IVF are deemed “clinically useless” because of imperfections, but…
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Health
M. Judah Folkman, biomedical pioneer, dies at 74
One of Harvard Medical School’s (HMS) most forward-looking and innovative physician-scientists, M. Judah Folkman, died suddenly Monday (Jan. 14) after suffering a heart attack at the Denver International Airport in Denver. He was 74. Folkman is widely known as a pioneer in the study of angiogenesis, the growth of new blood vessels. His findings in…
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Health
Peter Black named President-Elect of World Federation of Neurosurgical Societies
Peter Black, MD, PhD, Franc D. Ingraham Professor of Neurosurgery at Harvard Medical School and founding chair of the Brigham and Women’s Hospital Department of Neurosurgery has been elected President-Elect of the World Federation of Neurosurgical Societies (WFNS), a professional and scientific nongovernmental organization composed of five continental associations, 89 national neurosurgical societies and six…
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Health
Chromosomal abnormality linked to autism disorders
Researchers have fitted another piece into the complex genetic puzzle that is autism, finding DNA deletions and duplications on a specific chromosome that they say explains one to two percent of the 1.5 million cases of autism and related disorders in the United States today. The genetic changes were discovered in DNA scans of more…
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Science & Tech
Turning on cells with magnetic switches
Harvard scientists have figured out how to turn cells on and off using magnets, an advance with potentially broad applications as researchers around the world work to find new ways to manipulate cells and correct cellular functions that diseases send awry. Donald Ingber, the Judah Folkman Professor of Vascular Biology at Harvard Medical School and…
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Health
Harvard researchers achieve stem cell milestone
Harvard Stem Cell Institute researchers have successfully turned back the clock on human skin cells, causing them to revert to an embryonic stem cell-like state from which they can become any cell in the body. The work, published online Sunday (Dec. 23) by the journal Nature, is an independent report similar to the stem cell…
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Science & Tech
Discovery of a key molecular switch regulating cancer stem cells
The role of stem cells in tumor development has, unexpectedly, been one of the biggest stories in cancer research over the past few years. These aren’t embryonic stem cells, but rather tumor stem cells. These mutated cells, which live indefinitely and can seed new tumors, are now suspected of causing many, if not all, cancers.…
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Health
Slow reading in dyslexia tied to disorganized brain tracts
Dyslexia marked by poor reading fluency — slow and choppy reading — may be caused by disorganized, meandering tracts of nerve fibers in the brain, according to researchers at Children’s Hospital Boston, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC), and the Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE) at the time the work was done. Their study,…
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Health
Study examines substance abuse prevalence among teens receiving routine medical care
Approximately 15 percent of middle and upper middle class teens receiving routine outpatient medical care in a New England primary care network had positive results on a substance abuse questionnaire, according to a report in the November issue of Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, a journal published by the American Medical Association. “According to…
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Health
It took a novel tack to discover an obesity gene
The racing sailboat was small, and Christoph Lange wanted to be sure he didn’t capsize and plunge into the Charles River again, as he’d done half a dozen times that spring. Using his blue sailing shoes for leverage, he carefully arranged himself on the craft’s cramped bench and reached for the tiller. The day was…
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Health
Massive microRNA scan uncovers leads to treating muscle degeneration
Researchers have discovered the first microRNAs–tiny bits of code that regulate gene activity–linked to each of 10 major degenerative muscular disorders, opening doors to new treatments and a better biological understanding of these debilitating, poorly understood, often untreatable diseases. The study, published online by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, was led by…
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Health
Nine Harvard faculty members win NIH’s Pioneer, Innovator Awards
Nine Harvard researchers “well-positioned to make significant – and potentially transformative – discoveries in a variety of areas,” ranging from brain development to reprogramming stem cells, have been awarded special funding by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The grants, announced Tuesday (Sept. 18), total $15 million over the next five years. They will be…
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Health
Stem cells make new heart valves
Harvard researchers have coaxed adult stem cells into forming artificial heart valves that could one day mean fewer surgeries for children suffering from heart defects. The scientists, at Harvard-affiliated Boston Children’s Hospital, grew the valves from a type of stem cell that normally gives rise to the inner lining of blood vessels. They used a…
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Health
First robust genetic link to height in humans identified
Over a century ago, scientists first proposed that height is a complex trait — one influenced by environmental factors and multiple genes. While subsequent studies revealed that most of the variation in adult height is genetically determined, there has been little success in pinpointing the responsible genes. Some clues have come from rare syndromes of…
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Campus & Community
Authors fight misinformation on stem cell science
California’s Proposition 71, which committed the state to raising $3 billion for stem cell research, was a public policy ‘atom bomb that shifted the embryonic stem cell research debate from ‘whether to ‘how, the author of a book on the issue said Monday (Dec. 11). Michael Bellomo, author of ‘The Stem Cell Divide: The Facts,…
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Health
New insight into skin-tanning process suggests novel way of preventing skin cancer
Findings from a study led by researchers at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Children’s Hospital Boston have rewritten science’s understanding of the process of skin tanning – an insight that has enabled them to develop a promising way of protecting fair- skinned people from skin cancer caused by exposure to sunlight. The study, published in the…
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Campus & Community
Muscle cells grown into working heart cells
Muscle cells have been used successfully to restore life-sustaining rhythms to ailing hearts, a first step toward developing natural pacemakers. Placed in a tiny raft of collagen implanted into the hearts of rats, these cells survived for the entire lifespan of the animals. “Our experiments provide proof that engineered tissue can function as an electric…
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Health
Harvard Stem Cell Institute researchers granted approval
After more than two years of intensive ethical and scientific review, Harvard Stem Cell Institute (HSCI) researchers at Harvard and Children’s Hospital Boston have been cleared to begin experiments using Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer (SCNT) to create disease-specific stem cell lines in an effort to develop treatments for a wide range of now-incurable conditions afflicting…
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Campus & Community
HMS researchers isolate nerve growth compound
Researchers at Harvard Medical School and Children’s Hospital Boston have isolated a molecule that stimulates the regrowth of damaged adult nerve fibers, providing new hope for those suffering from nerve damage and from neurodegenerative diseases. Adult nerve fibers in the brain, spinal cord, and optic nerve – all parts of the central nervous system –…
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Science & Tech
Discovery of calcium channel protein illuminates T cell signaling
A rare genetic defect in a family has helped researchers identify a key signaling component in T cells. The newly identified protein, Orai1, may be a piece of a long- sought calcium channel in T cells that is critical for lymphocyte function. When two siblings inherited two copies of a mutant form of Orai1, it…
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Health
Seven children doing well with laboratory-grown organs
Three boys and four girls treated at Children’s Hospital Boston are the first people in the world to receive laboratory-grown organs. The children, aged 4 to 19, received bladders grown from their own cells and have now been followed for an average of almost four years. Their cases are reported in the April 4, 2006…
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Health
Getting ACL tears to heal themselves
Orthopedic surgeon Martha Murray reports that a collagen gel enriched with blood platelets can stimulate natural healing of a partial anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) tear. Murray and colleagues at Harvard-affiliated Children’s Hospital Boston found the gel can help regenerate the knee ligament and restore mechanical strength. Their findings are preliminary, but could lead to a…
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Health
Protein underlies brain’s response to activity
Experience helps shape the brain, but how that happens – how synapses are remodeled in response to activity – is one of neurobiology’s biggest mysteries. Though axons and dendrites can be easily spotted waxing and waning under the microscope, the molecular middlemen working inside the cell to shape the neuron’s sinewy processes have been much…
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Health
RNAi solution knocks down herpes infection
Ever since RNA interference hit the scene a few years ago as a way to selectively turn off gene expression, researchers have been investigating whether these small but powerful bits of RNA can be used as therapies. The problem has been delivery – how to get the RNA into the cell where it can silence…
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Campus & Community
Doctors overprescribing antibiotics for sore throats
Doctors treating sore throats are overprescribing antibiotics to more than a million U.S. children annually, unnecessarily driving up health costs, promoting the rise of drug-resistant bugs, and exposing children to unnecessary drugs and their side effects. That’s the conclusion of a new study of national treatment data by faculty at Harvard Medical School and the…
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Health
Kids too often prescribed antibiotics for sore throat
Each year, millions of children visit their family physician or pediatrician seeking treatment for sore throats. While a sore throat could indicate many common illnesses, physicians are often most concerned about bacterial infections that warrant antibiotic treatments. The most common cause of sore throat for which antibiotics are indicated is group A streptococcal pharyngitis, or…