Featured series 
Tag: Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology
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Campus & Community
Brown named to National Academy of Engineering
Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital Professor Emery N. Brown, who also holds appointments at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was named to the National Academy of Engineering in early February.
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Health
Obesity rate will reach at least 42%
Researchers at Harvard University say America’s obesity epidemic won’t plateau until at least 42 percent of adults are obese, an estimate derived by applying mathematical modeling to 40 years of Framingham Heart Study data.
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Health
Fuel efficiency for marathoners
Inspired by his experience in the 2005 New York Marathon, an M.D./Ph.D. student has taken a rigorous approach to calculating just how much carbohydrate a runner needs to fuel himself or herself through 26.2 miles, and what pace that runner can reasonably expect to sustain.
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Campus & Community
Harvey Goldman
Harvey Goldman, professor of pathology at Harvard Medical School and the Harvard-Massachusetts Institute of Technology Division of Health Sciences and Technology, died on April 6, 2009, from complications of a hematologic disorder. Goldman was not only a master educator, but also an outstanding surgical pathologist and investigator in the field of gastrointestinal pathology.
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Health
Three-dimensional structure of human genome deciphered
Scientists have deciphered the three-dimensional structure of the human genome, paving the way for new insights into genomic function and expanding our understanding of how cellular DNA folds at scales that dwarf the double helix. In a paper featured this week on the cover of the journal Science, they describe a new technology called Hi-C…
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Health
A more direct delivery of cancer drugs to tumors
An interdisciplinary team of researchers at Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH) and the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology (HST) has demonstrated a better way to deliver cancer drugs directly to tumors. The researchers used specially engineered nanoparticles that can inhibit a signaling pathway and deliver a higher concentration of medication to the specific…
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Health
Bone marrow stem cells may help control inflammatory bowel disease
Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and Harvard Medical School investigators have found that infusions of a particular bone marrow stem cell appeared to protect gastrointestinal tissue from autoimmune attack in a mouse model.
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Science & Tech
Five faculty members named young innovators by Technology Review
Work on flying robots, surgical tape modeled on gecko feet, energy tips gleaned from plants, new ways to grow stem cells, and dramatically smaller medical imaging equipment has landed five Harvard faculty members on a list of the world’s top 35 young innovators. The annual list is compiled by Technology Review magazine and features what…
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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
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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Campus & Community
Body art for the faint of heart
Ever wish you could get rid of that tattoo of barbed wire around your wrist, or the forearm-length dragon you once thought of as so stylish or macho? It’s not easy. You can go through a long, expensive series of laser treatments, and still not get it completely erased. You can have it sanded off,…
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Campus & Community
Finding a fossilized needle in an Arctic haystack
The first season searching Arctic Canada for a fossil that would illuminate how our ancestors first crawled onto land proved Harvard Professor Farish Jenkins’ explorer’s maxim: Never go any place for the first time. A crew of six trudged through a barren landscape during the summer of 1999, finding the wrong sort of rocks scattered…
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Campus & Community
Mad cow protein found to have a sane side
It’s a devastating disease, changing behavior, causing uncontrolled movements, blindness, coma, and, finally, death. And we all have the makings of it in our heads. When it topples cows, it’s known as mad cow disease. The human form is called Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. In sheep, it’s scrapie. It’s a rare malady caused by a misshapen protein…
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Science & Tech
Newly found species fills evolutionary gap between fish and land animals
Paleontologists have discovered fossils of a species that provides the missing evolutionary link between fish and the first animals that walked out of water onto land about 375 million years ago. The newly found species, Tiktaalik roseae, has a skull, a neck, ribs, and parts of the limbs that are similar to four- legged animals…
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Campus & Community
Bulyk searches for DNA on-off switches
Martha Bulyk held what looked like an ordinary glass slide up to the large window that is much of one wall of her Harvard Medical School office. The slide seemed to be blank, but a puff of breath exposed row after row of tiny dots, appearing like the hidden writing of a secret message. But…
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Health
Health care reform in China discussed
Health care in the People’s Republic of China is unequal and too expensive, and there’s not enough of it, but the Chinese government is aware of the problems and is moving to address them, China’s vice minister of health said Sept. 8 at Harvard Medical School.
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Health
Blood vessel drugs halt cancer growth
After decades of surviving peer rejection of his theory of cancer treatment by blocking tiny blood vessels, Judah Folkman has gone on to develop drugs that did what he predicted they would do. Folkman’s endostatin, the drug Fortune magazine called a failure, was used to treat 486 patients with lung cancer in China. At Dana-Farber…
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Campus & Community
Decoding the babel of brain cells
If brain cell messages could be separated from the “noise” of other brain activity and clearly understood, researchers would be closer to repairing damage caused by a number of nervous system diseases paralyzing injuries and combat wounds. Researchers at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston have actually done this with mice. They…
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Health
Close interaction seen between blood vessel development and fat tissue formation
Findings from researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital could eventually help to solve problems ranging from cancer, to obesity, to the development of replacement organs. The findings involve the key physiological processes of angiogenesis, the growth of new blood cells, and adipogenesis, the development and growth of fat cells, which appear to be so closely interwoven…
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Science & Tech
Putting bacteria to work
A nautical group of bacteria known as Prochlorococcus removes carbon dioxide from air and fixes it into the carbon content of their own tiny bodies. The more carbon dioxide they take from the air, the less is available to capture the heat that is causing the warm-up of our planet. That adds up to a…
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Science & Tech
RNA technology thwarts HIV
RNA interference (RNAi) is a naturally occurring phenomenon by which cells guard themselves against viruses. The process involves post-transcriptional gene silencing in which specific RNA sequences get chopped into small pieces after binding to complementary short interfering RNAs (siRNA). These siRNAs can target either host mRNAs or viral genomic or messenger RNAs. As a consequence,…
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Health
Cell surface proteins can have pro- and anti-angiogenic face
Angiogenesis is the process by which cancer tumors develop a network of blood vessels to feed them, so that they may continue their growth. The strategy that cancer cells use to attract blood vessels to them involves a series of chemical messages. Researchers think of this as a type of cellular kidnapping, luring the blood…
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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
Never-before-seen look inside the world of cancerous tumors
Harvard researchers working at Massachusetts General Hospital’s Radiation Oncology unit have used a powerful new microscope to see inside cancerous tumors. The microscope is so powerful that it can see individual cells within a tumor. “We can see what’s going on under the surface of the tumor without disturbing the tumor itself,” says principal investigator…
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Health
In human genome race, competition spurred better science
The conflicts between the two teams — one publicly funded, one private — that raced to sequence the human genome often drew more attention than the actual completion of the project itself. A team of Harvard researchers found that the rivalry spurred and improved a potentially sluggish public project. And an important consequence of the…
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Health
Birth of new brain cells induced in birds
Stem cells that are naturally present in the brains of finches were induced to replace lost cells and restore the birds’ ability to sing their distinctive song. “Our results represent the restoration of a brain circuit involved in a complex learned behavior,” says Jeffrey Macklis, associate professor of neurology in the Division of Neuroscience at…