Featured series 
Tag: Harvard Medical School
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Health
Stem cells open window on disease processes
A panel of Harvard Stem Cell Institute experts said recently that stem cell research’s biggest impact on patients’ health likely won’t come from therapies that inject stem cells or implant tissues made from them, but rather from the knowledge gained by examining diseased tissues grown from the cells. Kenneth Chien, head of the Harvard Stem…
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Health
Initial human trial of Type 1 diabetes treatment begun
Scientists at the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) have initiated a phase 1 clinical trial to reverse type 1 diabetes. The trial is exploring whether the promising results from the laboratory of Denise Faustman, Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, can be applied in human diabetes. A phase 1 trial is usually designed to…
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Science & Tech
President Faust testifies for increase in NIH funding
With the careers of a generation of young researchers threatened by five years of flat National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding, Harvard President Drew Faust and leaders of six other major research institutions were in Washington today (March 11) calling on Congress to repair the “Broken Pipeline” through which breakthroughs in the biomedical sciences should…
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Science & Tech
“…An important experiment for Harvard.”
When the Harvard University Science and Engineering Committee (HUSEC) gathered for its first meeting late last April, it was charged by not one, but two Harvard Presidents. Then President-designate and now President Drew Faust told the 18 members of the new committee that theirs is both a unique and “historic” body, created to forge meaningful…
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Science & Tech
J. Craig Venter named visiting scholar
J. Craig Venter, the visionary biologist and intellectual entrepreneur who was a leading figure in the decoding of the human genome, will join Harvard University as a visiting scholar at the University’s Origins of Life Initiative. Venter, who left his last academic post in 1982, is founder and president of the J. Craig Venter Institute.…
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Health
Restricting insulin doses increases mortality risk
A new study led by researchers at the Joslin Diabetes Center has found that women with type 1 diabetes who reported taking less insulin than prescribed had a three-fold increased risk of death and higher rates of disease complications than those who did not skip needed insulin shots. The new research appears in the March…
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Health
New strategy identified for improving effectiveness of cancer therapies
Manipulating levels of nitric oxide, a gas involved in many biological processes, may improve the disorganized network of blood vessels supplying tumors, potentially improving the effectiveness of radiation and chemotherapy. In advance on-line publication by the journal Nature Medicine, researchers from the Steele Laboratory of Radiation Oncology at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) report an experiment…
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Health
Medical basics still needed in Developing World
Despite all the progress and promise of modern medicine, most of the world is still struggling to get the fundamentals of medical care: simple diagnostic tests, affordable medicines, and efficient supply distribution, several Harvard specialists said today. During the AAAS symposium “High-Tech, Low-Cost Medicine: A New Paradigm for Global Health,” the doctors and researchers pointed…
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Science & Tech
Are building environmental and health disasters result of climate change?
Disagreement over the public health impact of global warming emerged in a symposium this morning at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. The colloquium, titled “Sustaining Human Health in a Changing Global Environment,” addressed what hazards can be expected as a result of rapid and continuing climate change. On…
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Science & Tech
The ethics of the organ bazaar
In nearly every country in the world, there is a shortage of kidneys for transplantation. In the United States, around 73,000 people are on waiting lists to receive a kidney. Yet 4,000 die every year before the lifesaving organ is available. Worldwide, about 66,000 kidney transplants are performed annually. By far, that’s too slow a…
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Health
Drug based on MGH discovery may significantly improve treatment of dangerous blood disorder
Two clinical trials of the novel drug romiplostim (Nplate) show that it significantly improved platelet levels in patients with chronic immune thrombocytopenic purpura (ITP), a hematologic disorder that can cause uncontrolled bleeding. An international research team reports Phase 3 trial results for the drug, which duplicates the action of a natural hormone discovered by a Massachusetts…
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Health
Grapefruit compound may help combat hepatitis C infection
A compound that naturally occurs in grapefruit and other citrus fruits may be able to block the secretion of hepatitis C virus (HCV) from infected cells, a process required to maintain chronic infection. A team of researchers from the Massachusetts General Hospital Center for Engineering in Medicine (MGH-CEM) report that HCV is bound to very…
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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
Cancer drug activates adult stem cells
The use of a drug used in cancer treatment activates stem cells that differentiate into bone appears to cause regeneration of bone tissue and be may be a potential treatment strategy for osteoporosis, according to a report in the February 2008 Journal of Clinical Investigation. The study – led by Harvard Stem Cell Institute (HSCI)…
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Health
HOPE in African HIV/AIDS fight
It was close to midnight one day this week in Durban, South Africa, when Harvard AIDS researcher Bruce D. Walker switched on his computer and made a visit to 104 Mt. Auburn St. in Cambridge. That’s the address of the Harvard Initiative for Global Health (HIGH), a multidisciplinary group that supports interfaculty research on worldwide…
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Science & Tech
Scientists may have identified new target for HIV vaccine
By coaxing the HIV-1 protein to reveal a hidden portion of its protein coat, scientists at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School have provided a newly detailed picture of how protective, or so-called broadly neutralizing, antibodies block HIV-1 infection. In a study in the January issue of Immunity, the investigators report that the discovery…
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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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Health
Those least needy most likely to get free drug samples
Most free drug samples are not used to ease the burden of the poor or the uninsured, but rather go to those most able to pay for their prescriptions, according to a study by physicians from Cambridge Health Alliance and Harvard Medical School. The study, which is the first to look at the free drug…
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Health
Gene variation may elevate risk of liver tumor in patients with cirrhosis
A genetic variation appears to significantly increase the risk that individuals with cirrhosis of the liver will develop hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), a liver tumor that is the third leading cause of cancer death. Researchers from Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) Cancer Center and colleagues in France describe in the January 2 edition of the Journal of…
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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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Health
Microchip-based device can detect rare tumor cells in bloodstream
A team of investigators from the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) BioMicroElectroMechanical Systems (BioMEMS) Resource Center and the MGH Cancer Center has developed a microchip-based device that can isolate, enumerate and analyze circulating tumor cells (CTCs) from a blood sample. CTCs are viable cells from solid tumors carried in the bloodstream at a level of one…
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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
Researchers discover second light-sensing system in human eye
New research on blind subjects has bolstered evidence that the human eye has two separate light-sensing systems — one that perceives the familiar visual signals that allow us to see and a second, separate system that tells our body when it is day or night. Researchers have long known that the eye performed both functions…
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Health
Transitivity, the orbitofrontal cortex, and neuroeconomics
You study the menu at a restaurant and decide to order the steak rather than the salmon. But when the waiter tells you about the lobster special, you decide lobster trumps steak. Without reconsidering the salmon, you place your order — all because of a trait called “transitivity.” “Transitivity is the hallmark of rational economic…
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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
Blood stem cells fight invaders
No other stem cell is more thoroughly understood than the blood, or hematopoietic, stem cell. These occasional and rare cells, scattered sparingly throughout the marrow and capable of replenishing an entire blood system, have been the driving force behind successful bone marrow transplants for decades. Scientists, for the most part, have seen this as the…