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Tag: Harvard Stem Cell Institute
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Nation & World
New hope for treating ALS
Harvard stem cell scientists have discovered that a recently approved medication for epilepsy might be a meaningful treatment for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, a uniformly fatal neurodegenerative disorder.
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Nation & World
Quality control
A Harvard research team led by Kevin Kit Parker, a Harvard Stem Cell Institute principal faculty member, has identified a set of 64 crucial parameters by which to judge stem cell-derived cardiac myocytes, making it possible for scientists and pharmaceutical companies to quantitatively judge and compare the value of stem cells.
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Nation & World
Alzheimer’s in a dish
Harvard stem cell scientists have successfully converted skins cells from patients with early onset Alzheimer’s into the types of neurons affected by the disease, making it possible for the first time to study this leading form of dementia in living human cells.
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Nation & World
Lessening liver damage
Harvard stem cell scientists studying the effect of nitric oxide on liver growth and regeneration appear to have serendipitously discovered a markedly improved treatment for liver damage caused by acetaminophen toxicity.
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Nation & World
‘Junk?’ Not so fast
Research by Harvard Stem Cell Institute scientists shows that much lincRNA, which had been generally believed useless, plays an important role in the genome.
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Nation & World
Clues on generating muscles
Harvard stem cell scientists have discovered that the same chemicals that stimulate muscle development in zebrafish can be used to differentiate human stem cells into muscle cells in the laboratory, which makes muscle cell therapy a more realistic clinical possibility.
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Nation & World
Improving cord blood transplants
They began with a discovery in zebrafish in 2007, and now researchers at the Harvard Stem Cell Institute (HSCI) have published initial results of a Phase Ib human clinical trial of a therapeutic that could improve the success of blood stem cell transplantation. This marks the first time that HSCI has carried a discovery from…
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Nation & World
A marker for breast cancer
An international scientific collaborative led by the Harvard Stem Cell Institute’s Kornelia Polyak has discovered why women who give birth in their early 20s are less likely to develop breast cancer than women who don’t, triggering a search for a way to confer this protective state on all women.
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Nation & World
A cross-country collaboration
Amy Wagers and Emmanuelle Passegué have found that cancer stem cells actively remodel the environment of bone marrow, where blood cells are formed, so that it is hospitable only to diseased cells. This finding could influence the effectiveness of bone marrow transplants.
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Nation & World
Developing cancer drugs
Harvard Stem Cell Institute researchers have identified in the most aggressive forms of cancer a gene known to regulate embryonic stem cell self-renewal, beginning a creative search for a drug that can block its activity.
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Nation & World
Embracing the magic of science
With plans to develop a career in medical research, Jennifer Cloutier is graduating from Harvard with her interest reinforced on research and medicine.
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Nation & World
A fascination with fixing bodies
After college, Joshua Wortzel plans to build upon his Harvard research that focused on tissue regeneration. He hopes to work in translational medicine, helping to create drugs that might augment patients’ lives.
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Nation & World
Changing the Foundations of Science: Harvard Stem Cell Institute | One Harvard
In the nine years since its founding, The Harvard Stem Cell Institute has become the world leader in stem cell biology.
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Nation & World
Making old hearts younger
Two Harvard Stem Cell Institute researchers have identified a protein in the blood of mice and humans that may prove to be the first effective treatment for the form of age-related heart failure that affects millions of Americans, a study says.
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Nation & World
Potential diabetes breakthrough
Researchers at the Harvard Stem Cell Institute have discovered a hormone that holds promise for a dramatically more effective treatment of type 2 diabetes, a metabolic illness afflicting an estimated 26 million Americans.
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Nation & World
Big boost in drug discovery
Using a new, stem cell-based, drug-screening technology that could reinvent and greatly reduce the cost of developing pharmaceuticals, researchers at the Harvard Stem Cell Institute have found a compound that is more effective in protecting the neurons killed in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis than are two drugs that failed in human clinical trials.
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Nation & World
New avenue in neurobiology
Harvard stem cell biologists have proven that it is possible to turn one type of already differentiated neuron into another inside the brain, and their findings may have enormous implications for the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases.
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Nation & World
‘Stem cell tourism’ growing trend
A Harvard panel examined the problem of clinics around the world that provide stem cell treatments for intractable conditions. Although there is no medical evidence of the treatments’ effectiveness, such clinics have drawn thousands of patients from many countries.
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Nation & World
Stem cells need recovery time, too
A new study describes the mechanism behind impaired muscle repair during aging and a strategy that may help rejuvenate aging tissue by manipulating the environment in which muscle stem cells reside.
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Nation & World
Personalized medicine closer to reality
A consortium of scientists at 20 institutions, led by a principal faculty member at the Harvard Stem Cell Institute, has used stem cells to take a major step toward developing personalized medicine to treat Parkinson’s disease.
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Nation & World
Big advance against cystic fibrosis
Harvard stem cell researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital have taken a critical step toward discovering in the relatively near future a drug to control cystic fibrosis, a fatal lung disease that claims about 500 lives each year, with 1,000 new cases diagnosed annually.
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Nation & World
Obesity? Diabetes? We’ve been set up
The twin epidemics of obesity and its cousin, diabetes, have been the target of numerous studies at Harvard and its affiliated hospitals and institutions. Harvard researchers have produced a dizzying array of findings on the often related problems.
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Nation & World
Funding success, and finding it
Four years ago, Harvard’s Office of Technology Development launched its Accelerator Fund, a $10 million revolving account to be used as a bridge across the “valley” between creation and development. The fund is proving to be just such a bridge.
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Nation & World
Stimulating Cells – Doug Melton – Harvard Thinks Big
Doug Melton Thomas Dudley Cabot Professor of the Natural Sciences at Harvard University and co-Director of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute
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Nation & World
Age-related effects of MS may prove reversible
In a new study, Harvard stem cell researchers and scientists at the University of Cambridge have found that the age-related degeneration in conditions such as multiple sclerosis (MS) may be reversible.
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Nation & World
Harvard’s startup upstart
Gordon Jones, director of the new Harvard Innovation Lab, has ideas on how to foster an entrepreneurial mentality at the country’s oldest university.
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Nation & World
Stem cell lessons
Five years after first gaining institutional permission to attempt to produce stem cell lines via somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT), two Harvard researchers and a former Harvard postdoctoral fellow have closed the loop with a flurry of new studies and a commentary in several leading journals.
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Nation & World
Two named University Professors
Rebecca M. Henderson of the Harvard Business School and Douglas Melton of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and the Harvard Medical School were named University Professors in recognition of their dedication to teaching and scholarship that crosses academic boundaries.
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Nation & World
From skin cells to motor neurons
Harvard stem cell researchers have succeeded in reprogramming adult mouse skin cells directly into the type of motor neurons damaged in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, best known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, and spinal muscular atrophy.
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Nation & World
Looking ahead
He’s an economist, a researcher, and a physician, and he’s about to become provost. On the day (April 15) that President Drew Faust announced that he would be Harvard’s next provost, Alan M. Garber ’76 sat down with the Gazette to talk about his career, his new role, and facilitating connections across traditional academic boundaries…
