Featured series 
Tag: Harvard Medical School
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Health
Scientists use genomic tools to create maps of DNA methylation
Much of the field of stem cell biology and development remains uncharted territory. Just as famous explorers and astronomers mapped out landmasses and constellations, researchers are working fervently to chart the molecular landscapes within stem cells — especially embryonic stem cells. A clearer understanding of the cells’ unique properties, particularly their ability to give rise…
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Nation & World
Confronting tuberculosis
In the shadow of a hill where lepers once lived, a tuberculosis hospital designed for those infected with deadly, drug-resistant strains of the disease is giving hope to a new generation of medical pariahs in the tiny African nation of Lesotho.
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Nation & World
After years of talk, time for action
It was a tough assessment for a health clinic, and Jim Yong Kim was standing in the middle of one when he made it. “A lot of these are known as places where you go to die.”
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Nation & World
A pandemic’s front lines
Jim Yong Kim walked out of the small cinder block room where an underweight boy of 5 lay, his heart rate down to 115 from the dangerous 150 beats per minute at which it had been racing moments earlier. Kim stripped rubber gloves from his hands. “That was incredibly gutsy,” he said flatly…
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Health
Researchers identify promising cancer drug target in prostate tumors
Scientists at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute report they have blocked the development of prostate tumors in cancer-prone mice by knocking out a molecular unit they describe as a “powerhouse” that drives runaway cell growth. In a letter appearing in an advanced online publication by the journal Nature, the researchers said the growth-stimulating molecule called p110beta —…
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Nation & World
Shelter amid a health care storm
South Africa’s Valley of 1,000 Hills is a broad and breathtaking natural contradiction, an enormous valley whose floor is crowded with hills large and small, as if nature wasn’t quite sure what it was making.
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Nation & World
Fighting AIDS now and in the future
In the heart of the South African AIDS epidemic, at a medical school named for the nation’s legendary anti-apartheid leader, a fight against a different sort of oppression is being waged.
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Health
New source of heart stem cells discovered
Harvard Stem Cell Institute(HSCI) researchers at Children’s Hospital Boston are continuing to document the heart’s earliest origins. Now, they have pinpointed a new, previously unrecognized group of stem cells that give rise to cardiomyocytes, or heart muscle cells. These stem cells, located in the surface of the heart, or epicardium, advance the hope of being…
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Health
Previously unknown regulator of fat and cholesterol production discovered in mice
Researchers have discovered an unknown regulator of fat and cholesterol production in the liver of mice, a significant finding that could eventually lead to new therapies for lowering unhealthy blood levels of cholesterol and fats. The team led by scientists from the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) showed how this might work in an…
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Health
Scientists isolate a toxic key to Alzheimer’s disease in human brains
Scientists have long questioned whether the abundant amounts of amyloid plaques found in the brains of patients with Alzheimer’s actually caused the neurological disease or were a by-product of its progress. Now, using new research techniques, scientists have shown that a two-molecule aggregate (or dimer) of beta-amyloid protein fragments may play a role in initiating…
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Health
Video game technology may help surgeons operate on beating hearts
Surgery has been done inside some adults’ hearts while the heart is still beating, avoiding the need to open the chest, stop the heart and put patients on cardiopulmonary bypass. But to perform intricate beating-heart operations in babies with congenital heart disease or do beating-heart complex repairs in adults, surgeons need fast, highly sophisticated real-time…
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Campus & Community
HMS technical staff member Andrew J. Hession, 52
Andrew J. Hession, an HVAC technician for Harvard Medical School (HMS) for seven years, died on May 26 of complications from heart surgery.
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Nation & World
Training a physician’s eye on policy
Three years into his medical school career, Joe Ladapo had a revelation, but it wasn’t in a medical class, it was in economics.
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Health
NIH awards Harvard Medical School $117.5 million, five-year grant for patient-centered research
The National Institutes of Health today announced that Harvard Medical School (HMS) will receive $117.5 million over the next five years for the establishment of a Clinical and Translational Science Center (CTSC) that will transform patient-oriented, laboratory-to-bedside research at HMS and its affiliated hospitals. Harvard University, HMS, and a number of the affiliated hospitals are…
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Health
Intestinal bacteria promote and prevent inflammatory bowel disease
Scientists search for drug candidates in some very unlikely places. Not only do they churn out synthetic compounds in industrial-scale laboratories, but they also scour coral reefs and scrape tree bark in the hope of stumbling upon an unsuspecting molecule that just might turn into next year’s big block buster. But one region that scientists…
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Health
Genomic analysis gives new insights into cellular reprogramming
A cross-disciplinary team of Harvard University, Whitehead Institute, and Broad Institute researchers has uncovered significant new information about the molecular changes that underlie the process by which adult cells can be reprogrammed to a stem cell-like state. Their findings are published online on May 28, 2008, in the journal Nature. “We used a genomic approach…
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Science & Tech
Study identifies food-related clock in the brain
In investigating the intricacies of the body’s biological rhythms, scientists at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) have discovered the existence of a “food-related clock” which can supersede the “light-based” master clock that serves as the body’s primary timekeeper. The findings, which appear in the May 23 issue of the journal Science, help explain how…
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Nation & World
Students see AIDS up close
While her classmates in Cambridge were shivering through a New England February, Sandy Bolm was sweltering in the heat of a Botswana summer, staring her future in the face in the labs of the Botswana-Harvard Partnership.
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Nation & World
AIDS: Finding answers
Ampheletse Medupe’s headaches just wouldn’t go away. Living in her small, neat home outside the African nation of Botswana’s capital, the mother of four kept on as best she could until sores broke out on her face.
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Nation & World
AIDS and hope
The man and woman grin down from the large billboard overlooking the road to the hospital in Mochudi, a small town outside Botswana’s capital of Gaborone.
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Health
Molecular analysis confirms T. Rex’s evolutionary link to birds
Putting more meat on the theory that dinosaurs’ closest living relatives are modern-day birds, molecular analysis of a shred of 68-million-year-old Tyrannosaurus rex protein — along with that of 21 modern species — confirms that dinosaurs share common ancestry with chickens, ostriches, and to a lesser extent, alligators. The work, published this week in the…
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Campus & Community
Cambridge Health Alliance, HMS award honors Auerbach
John M. Auerbach, commissioner of the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, received the Ruth M. Batson Social Justice Award April 15 at Harvard Medical School’s “Reflection in Action: Building Healthy Communities” celebration.
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Health
Elevated urate levels may slow progression of Parkinson’s disease
Naturally elevated levels of the antioxidant urate may slow the progression of Parkinson’s disease in men. Researchers from the MassGeneral Institute for Neurodegenerative Disease (MGH-MIND) and Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) examined data from an earlier study and found that, among recently diagnosed Parkinson’s patients, those with the highest urate levels had a significantly…
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Health
Reprogrammed adult skin cells treat Parkinson’s disease in animal model
Researchers at the Whitehead Institute and Harvard Stem Cell Institute(HSCI) have reported successfully reducing symptoms in a Parkinson’s disease rat model by using dopamine producing neurons derived from reprogrammed adult skin cells(iPS). The work was reported in a study published in the online Early Edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Science. “This is the…
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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
Suboptimal sleep, TV watching correlate with overweight in infants and toddlers
Infants and toddlers who sleep less than 12 hours a day are twice as likely to become overweight by age 3 than children who sleep longer. In addition, high levels of television viewing combined with less sleep elevate the risk, so that children who sleep less than 12 hours and who view two or more…
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Health
Louise Ivers: ‘I can’t sleep at night because of the things that I see.’
Louise Ivers gently lifted the 7-month-old by his forearms, hoping he would pull himself up as a healthy child a third his age might. But his head hung limply back, eyes wide, upper body slack. At 7 months, when a healthy child would be sitting up on his own and thinking about crawling, this baby…
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Science & Tech
Harvard Medical School to reduce student debt burden
Harvard Medical School (HMS) Dean Jeffrey Flier today announced that the school is taking steps to reduce the cost of a four-year medical education by an average of $50,000 for families with incomes of $120,000 or less. “The issue of student debt is of great concern to me, which is why I feel particular satisfaction…