Featured series 
Tag: Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology
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Campus & Community
Scientists create high-speed nanowire circuits
Chemists and engineers at Harvard University have made robust circuits from minuscule nanowires that align themselves on a chip of glass during low-temperature fabrication, creating rudimentary electronic devices that offer solid performance without high-temperature production or high-priced silicon. The researchers, led by chemist Charles M. Lieber and engineer Donhee Ham, produced circuits at low temperature…
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Science & Tech
Nanotechnology: Big issues from small stuff
Discoveries in nanotechnology could change the future. Where will such discoveries most likely to take place? Don’t assume it’ll be the United States, cautions Mallinckrodt Professor of Chemistry George Whitesides. Japan’s and Western Europe’s investments in nanotech R&D are on par with the United States, and China is coming up quickly. “We don’t yet know…
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Science & Tech
Matthew Shair imitates, improves on nature
Matthew Shair and his students work in “protein trafficking.” Genes in living cells carry instructions for making proteins essential to life. These proteins have to get from place to place in the cells and to destinations outside the cells. It’s like traffic on a busy freeway. The problem Shair set for himself was to find…
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Campus & Community
Building circuits measured in molecules
Yu Huang, a doctoral student in Professor Charles Lieber’s lab, has used fluid flows to arrange tiny bits of wires that are just billionths of a meter wide into millimeter-long lengths. By switching the direction of subsequent flows, Huang has been able to create grids of these wires that could function as electronic circuits. The…
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Health
Sea squirt cancer drug under test
In the United States, researchers at three Harvard University-affiliated hospitals — Massachusetts General Hospital, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, and Brigham and Women’s Hospital — have been testing a powerful drug on patients with breast, ovarian, and prostate cancer. “Tests show that the drug has been active enough to expand these trials,” says Bruce Chabner, a professor…
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Science & Tech
Nanowire used to sense cancer marker
Professor Charles Lieber and his students have made wires whose thinness is measured in atoms instead of fractions of an inch. That allowed Lieber’s team to develop what is likely to be an important scientific tool, a coated wire capable of detecting low levels of a protein that marks the presence or recurrence of prostate…
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Health
A strategy to neutralize anthrax toxin in the body
A Harvard Medical School research team has developed a strategy to neutralize anthrax toxin in the body. So far they have tried the treatment in rats. Normally, rats die within hours after being injected with anthrax toxin. But when the toxin was followed minutes later with an injection of an inhibiting agent known as a…
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Health
Potent cancer drugs made from sea squirts
In May 2000, researchers at Harvard University announced that they had succeeded in synthesizing a complex anti-tumor drug that is more powerful than any other known drug. The drug, ecteinascidin, is so potent that a mere 11 pounds of it should be enough to satisfy the present world demand for an entire year, Elias J.…
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Science & Tech
Scientists probe Northern Hemisphere ozone loss
The ozone layer shields us from cancerous ultraviolet radiation. Understanding how it is being destroyed was the mission of more than 350 scientists from the United States, Canada, Europe, Japan, and Russia; 19 of the researchers came from Harvard. The exploration included the first high-altitude reconnaissance flights over Russia since the Soviet Union shot down…
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Science & Tech
Researcher Sunney Xie interested in molecule as an individual
Sunney Xie is one of the world’s leading researchers in molecular imaging and in single-molecule reactions. Xie’s has devised a way to use laser beams to see collections of protein molecules. The new imaging method is important because it allows researchers to see how biomolecules are assembled in biological membranes and how their relative position…