Featured series 
Tag: Immune Disease Institute
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Health
Better blood
An innovative experimental treatment for boosting the effectiveness of blood stem-cell transplants with umbilical cord blood has a favorable safety profile in long-term animal studies, according to Harvard Stem Cell Institute scientists at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, and Children’s Hospital Boston.
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Health
A man of endless curiosity
Emre Basar seeks to understand how small interfering RNA (siRNA) can be harnessed and integrated into cells with the goal of silencing the expression of certain proteins that allow diseases like breast cancer and HIV to proliferate inside the body.
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Science & Tech
Discovery of calcium channel protein illuminates T cell signaling
A rare genetic defect in a family has helped researchers identify a key signaling component in T cells. The newly identified protein, Orai1, may be a piece of a long- sought calcium channel in T cells that is critical for lymphocyte function. When two siblings inherited two copies of a mutant form of Orai1, it…
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Health
RNA sequence restrains fatal encephalitis
One short sequence of RNA protected mice from deadly brain inflammation caused by West Nile virus and Japanese encephalitis virus, report Priti Kumar, Manjunath Swamy, and Premlata Shankar. The findings, which appear online and in the April 2006 PLoS Medicine, underscore the therapeutic potential of the fast-moving field of RNA interference. It has only been…
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Health
Innate signal sparks homing of T cells
The results of three studies published together in the Aug. 31, 2003 online edition of Nature Immunology help explain the uncanny ability of T cells to home to problem areas in the body and suggest potential new mechanisms to treat inflammatory diseases, such as asthma. When one fast-acting lipid hits the panic button about a…
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Health
Resistance mutation found for Gleevec
The drug Gleevec was stunningly successful in treating patients with chronic myelogenous leukemia (CML) at early stages of disease, but quickly stopped working in most patients with more advanced forms of CML. Last year, researchers at UCLA headed by Charles Sawyers found that some resistant patients carried a mutant version of Bcr-Abl. The original mutation,…
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Health
Researchers identify protein linked to tumor invasion
Metastasis occurs when cancer cells penetrate the boundaries of the tumor’s tissue and infiltrate the walls of blood vessels or lymph vessels, gaining a means of transport to other parts of the body –- far from the original tumor site –- where they can then grow anew. This process is unique to cancer cells and…
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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
Lack of protein ApoE in brain may raise Alzheimer’s risk
Brain cells are protected from possible contamination by substances in circulating blood by what is known as “the blood-brain barrier.” Researchers have many questions about precisely how this protective mechanism works. Recently, Harvard Medical Sschool researchers identified a protein that supports the blood-brain barrier. When a molecule, apolipoprotein E (apoE), is absent, the barrier becomes…
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Health
Sorting good eggs from bad ones
An oocyte is an immature egg cell in the ovaries. Before a woman is born, her ovaries will contain about five million eggs. At birth, about three million of those egg cells die — apparently by committing suicide. This fact of nature has long puzzled scientists. Now, Harvard researchers working at the Center for Blood…