Featured series 
Tag: Children’s Hospital Boston
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Health
Researchers identify gene’s role in suppressing longevity
SIRT1 is involved in cellular senescence, or limitation of cells’ reproductive lifespan, a process thought to ensure that aging cells don’t pass on harmful mutations. Frederick W. Alt, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator at Children’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, and colleagues suppressed SIRT1 activity in cultures of mouse embryonic fibroblasts, or primitive cells…
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Health
Images reveal how leading cause of severe childhood diarrhea enters cells
The work illustrates how vaccine development can advance by probing the physical architecture of viruses and finding the parts needed to prime the immune system. Rotavirus, which causes severe diarrhea and vomiting, infects most children, causes gastroenteritis that sometimes requires hospitalization, and kills about 440,000 children each year. The only licensed vaccine, RotaShield, was discontinued…
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Health
Stem cell science
“Stem-cell transplants are already performed every day in Harvard-affiliated hospitals — and around the world,” says Harvard Stem Cell Initiative codirector David Scadden, professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and director of the Center for Regenerative Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital. So-called bone-marrow transplants, which transfer tens of thousands of cells of many different…
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Health
Newly identified gene linked to brain development
Bilateral frontoparietal polymicrogyria (BFPP) is a recessive genetic disorder resulting in severely abnormal architecture of the brain’s frontal lobes, as well as milder involvement of parietal and posterior parts of the cerebral cortex, which is “the part of the brain that distinguishes humans from other species,” says the study’s senior author, Christopher A. Walsh, M.D.,…
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Health
Many have ‘cancer,’ but few progress to true disease
Folkman and Kalluri suggest that most tumors don’t develop a blood supply that allows them to grow and progress to cancer, because people produce natural inhibitors of blood vessel growth, or angiogenesis. They write that a better understanding of these inhibitors may yield a new generation of nontoxic anticancer drugs that could be given preventively…
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Campus & Community
3-D images reveal key step in viral entry into cells
Work published in the Jan. 22, 2004, issue of Nature is a significant advance in the understanding of how viruses cause infection, and offers two possible strategies for blocking these infections with antiviral drugs or vaccines. The research involved a major category of viruses known as “enveloped” viruses, so called because of their fatty outer…
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Campus & Community
Surgery done on a single cell
A superprecise scalpel that can be used to operate on an individual cell is now a reality thanks to experimenters at Harvard University. “Ultrashort laser pulses [up to 1,000 a second] produce a spot as hot as the sun,” notes Eric Mazur, Gordon McKay Professor of Applied Physics. “Normally, that kind of heat would vaporize…
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Health
Matrix-buster inhibitor has second way to throttle angiogenesis
Matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs) and their regulators, the tissue inhibitors of metalloproteinases (TIMPs), form an intriguing partnership. MMPs work by breaking down the dense matrix surrounding cells, freeing them to wander the body during processes like metastasis and angiogenesis. TIMPs rein in the MMPs, essentially cutting off the supply of migrating cancer or endothelial cells. Given…
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Health
Dieting may actually promote weight gain in children
The prevalence of overweight and obese children has increased by 100 percent since the 1980s. Americans spend about $33 billion a year on weight loss products and services, however, only about one in five adults follow recommended diet guidelines, possibly explaining why most people fail to maintain long-term weight control. It now appears that casual…
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Health
Stricter alcohol policy enforcement may curb college drinking
A study consisted of 11 public schools, including three state university campuses and eight state colleges that fall under the purview of the Massachusetts Board of Higher Education (MBHE). In each of the 11 schools, the dean of students, chief of campus security, and a representative sample of students completed surveys about their campus’ alcohol…
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Science & Tech
In simulation, bioterrorist warning system passes test
Working within a bioterrorism scenario, an early warning system to detect attacks fulfilled its mission. Those who conducted the test say that, had it been real, millions of lives would have been saved. “We estimate that smallpox cases could have been reduced by as much as six or seven orders of magnitude, from 10 million…
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Health
Kidney disease genes tied to flow sensing
Polycystic kidney disease, or PKD, is the most common life-threatening genetic disease. It is caused by mutations in one of two genes. Though the genetic defect that causes PKD is known, how it leads kidneys to enlarge and choke with fluid-filled cysts has been frustratingly elusive. A new line of evidence points to a cellular…
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Science & Tech
Researchers regenerate zebrafish heart muscle
A research team led by Mark T. Keating showed that zebrafish can regenerate heart muscle within two months after a severe injury. The team, from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute at Children’s Hospital Boston, also identified a possible genetic and molecular model for regeneration in zebrafish that could help direct further research in humans. The…
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Health
Protein predicts heart disease better than cholesterol
C-reactive protein’s claim to fame is based on its power to predict a woman’s risk of developing heart attack and stroke. In fact, high levels of C-reactive protein (CRP) were found to presage a woman’s chances of developing heart disease more accurately than that reigning oracle of the cardiology world, cholesterol. Researchers Paul Ridker, Nader…
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Health
Stem cells reduce brain damage
Mice with the kind of brain damage caused by strokes or cerebral palsy received implants of stem cells that resulted in the spontaneous replacement of many of the missing cells, according to Evan Snyder, a neurologist at the Harvard Medical School, who led the research. In other experiments, stem cells unexpectedly rescued the injured nerve…
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Health
Brake on Axon regrowth discovered
Since nerve cell axons in the mature central nervous system do not regrow, neurologists have no way of fully treating paralysis due to injury. “About a hundred years ago, people started asking why it was impossible to get the axon to regenerate upon injury,” said Zhigang He, Harvard Medical School assistant professor of neurology at…
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Health
Investigators discover method to stimulate brain rewiring after stroke
After a stroke, brain cells die and their connections to other parts of the brain are lost. In a study with rats conducted at Children’s Hospital in Boston, a naturally occurring substance called inosine was shown to stimulate nerve cells in undamaged parts of the brain to grow new connections into brain areas that had…
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Health
Six new breast cancer-susceptibility genes found
The discovery of six new cancer-susceptibility genes grew out of more than 10 years of research by Alan D’Andrea into Fanconi anemia, a condition known to affect only 500 families in the United States. Children born with the condition usually develop bone marrow failure early in life, leaving them unable to produce oxygen-carrying red blood…
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Health
One in five women iron deficient, many children also at risk
Iron-deficient anemia reduces the oxygen-carrying capacity of red blood cells, thus decreasing energy and endurance. When there is not enough iron, the red blood cells are not able to produce enough hemoglobin (the oxygen-transporting pigments found in red blood cells). Those affected may have pale skin and be excessively tired and ineffective at work or…
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Health
Researchers use therapeutic cloning to create functional tissue in cows
In a study, researchers obtained cow oocytes (donor eggs from cow ovaries) and removed and discarded the nuclei, which contain the cells’ genetic material, leaving behind just the shell. A skin cell from the cow’s ears was placed inside the egg shell and burst with electrical energy to expand the cell. That induced the one…
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Science & Tech
Black, Latino children with asthma receive lesser standard of care
Led by Tracy Lieu, associate professor of ambulatory care and prevention at Harvard Pilgrim Health Care and Harvard Medical School, the researchers interviewed parents of children with asthma who were insured by Medicaid programs. Of the children, 38 percent were black, 19 percent Latino, and 31 percent white. The researchers studied the effects of ethnicity…
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Health
Increased intake of dairy products may help reduce risk of insulin resistance
Milk intake has decreased significantly over the past three decades while the prevalence of obesity and type 2 diabetes has increased. The authors of a Harvard research study note that for most of the past 30 years, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the American Heart Association have recommended low-fat diets for the prevention and…
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Health
Researchers find better way to predict childhood brain tumor outcomes
About 2,000 children a year are diagnosed with medulloblastoma, or brain tumor. In a study, researchers examined gene expression patterns from 99 patient tumor samples of three different types of brain tumors. In addition to distinguishing tumor types from each other, the study found strong expression of a signaling protein known as “Sonic Hedgehog,” which…
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Health
Sickle cell disease cured in mouse model
Sickle cell disease is a blood disorder caused by a single mutation in the beta-globin gene that results in the substitution of one amino acid. This small error is enough to change the properties of the protein: when “sickled,” the blood’s hemoglobin dumps its oxygen in tissues, and it tends to stick to itself. This…
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Science & Tech
New study provides mixed report card on informed consent to cancer clinical trials
According to a study that appeared in the Nov. 24, 2001, issue of The Lancet, nearly one quarter of cancer patients who participate in clinical trials do not realize that the trials are conducted mainly to benefit future patients, not themselves. Many patients are unaware that experimental treatments are not yet proven to be better…
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Health
How does the brain reinvent itself?
In order for us to use our minds for memory, for learning, and so forth, our brains must continually reinvent themselves. How do they do it? A Harvard Medical School research team has looked at the complicated interactions within nerve cells of ion channels, peptide hormones, growth factors, and a host of regulatory proteins and…
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Health
Researchers discover new type of cancer
A team led by a Harvard researcher has identified a new type of cancer that primarily affects young girls. Sara Vargas, an instructor in pathology at Harvard Medical School and a researcher in the Department of Pathology at Children’s Hospital in Boston, led the study that identified the new syndrome. The cancer is characterized by…
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Health
Harvard scientists identify chromosome location of genes associated with long life
Scientists have long thought of aging as a complex process affected by perhaps a thousand genes. So a recent discovery by Harvard scientists that a gene or genes located on a region of human Chromosome 4 may help people to live to age 100 was something of a surprise. “This is the first study to…
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Health
Amniotic cells may be source of new tissue
Babies born with congenital defects often require surgery. Surgeons face a problem, however — in adults, tissue for repair is borrowed from other areas of the body, but babies don’t have enough tissue to spare. Sometimes surgeons use teflon — certainly not an ideal replacement. The laboratory of Dario Fauza, Harvard Medical School instructor in…