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Tag: MGH
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Nation & World
Researchers successfully track voyage of single stem cell
The title of the letter in the Dec. 3 edition of the journal Nature — “Live-animal tracking of individual haematopoietic stem/progenitor cells in their niche” — doesn’t begin to describe it, this real-life, real-time view of a single stem cell making its way to its ultimate home inside the bone-marrow cavity of a living mouse.
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Nation & World
Genetic screening no better than traditional risk factors for predicting type 2 diabetes
Screening for a panel of gene variants associated with the risk for type 2 diabetes can identify adults at risk for the disorder but is not significantly better than assessment based on traditional risk factors such as weight, blood pressure, and blood sugar levels.
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Nation & World
Anesthetic causes changes in mouse brains
For the first time researchers have shown that a commonly used anesthetic can produce changes associated with Alzheimer’s disease in the brains of living mammals, confirming previous laboratory studies. In their Annals of Neurology report, which has received early online release, a team of Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) investigators shows how administration of the gas…
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Nation & World
Gary Ruvkun took a roundabout route to science
Gary Ruvkun has made a career out of imagining the unimaginable, and of surrounding himself with like-minded thinkers who let the wheels of thought spin until they catch on something hard, gain traction, and take off.
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Nation & World
Mortimer John Buckley
Mortimer John Buckley was born July 1, 1932 in Worcester, Massachusetts to an Irish immigrant family from near Killarney. Mort attended the College of the Holy Cross and then Boston University Medical School, later being named a distinguished alumnus of both schools.
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Nation & World
Gene therapy restores vision to mice with retinal degeneration
Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) researchers have used gene therapy to restore useful vision to mice with degeneration of the light-sensing retinal rods and cones, a common cause of human blindness. Their report, appearing in the Oct. 14 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, describes the effects of broadly expressing a light-sensitive protein in other…
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Nation & World
Study shows what smokers need to stay clean
Hospital-sponsored stop-smoking programs for inpatients that include follow-up counseling for longer than one month significantly improve patients’ ability to stay smoke-free. An analysis of clinical trials of programs offered at hospitals around the world finds that efforts featuring long-term support can increase participants’ chances of success by 65 percent.
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Nation & World
Star quest knowledge provides new view of ourselves
In a basement laboratory at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA), surrounded by instruments built to detect the universe’s distant secrets, sits a machine that will help us look not outward to the stars, but inward at our own bodies.
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Nation & World
New approach to gene therapy may shrink brain tumors, prevent their spread
Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) researchers are investigating a new approach to gene therapy for brain tumors — delivering a cancer-fighting gene to normal brain tissue around the tumor to keep it from spreading. An animal study described in the journal Molecular Therapy, the first study to test the feasibility of such an approach, found that…
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Nation & World
Anne Alonso
At the time of her death in August of 2007, Anne Alonso was widely held to be a leading teacher and practitioner of psychodynamic therapy of her day.
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Nation & World
HMS/MGH’s Bruce Walker presents update on vaccine progress
Bruce Walker recalls sitting across from a person long-infected with HIV who never took antiretroviral drugs and never developed AIDS. Walker remembers thinking that the person’s body held a secret of which even they were unaware: how to stop the global AIDS pandemic.
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Nation & World
Stem cell summit hails bench progress, looks to bedside future
New discoveries concerning cell reprogramming over the past year have boosted stem cell researchers in the lab and encouraged efforts to transfer test tube and lab animal advances to humans suffering degenerative diseases such as diabetes, Parkinson’s disease, and Lou Gehrig’s disease.
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Nation & World
Ruvkun among Lasker Award winners
Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and Harvard Medical School (HMS) investigator Gary Ruvkun is one of three co-recipients of the 2008 Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research.
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Nation & World
Edward ‘Ted’ W. Webster
Edward (“Ted”) W. Webster, Ph.D., 83, Professor Emeritus of Radiology (Physics) Harvard Medical School (HMS), passed away on Saturday, December 17th, 2005. He will be remembered both for his many scientific contributions and his friendly, warm and supportive manner.
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Nation & World
Driven to succeed
When the baby vomited again, Gail Melton knew something was seriously wrong with her second child, a son she and her husband, Doug Melton, had named Sam. She phoned Doug and took Sam to Harvard Health Services in Holyoke Center. Doug hurried to the clinic from his Fairchild Biochemistry Building lab on Divinity Avenue. Together…
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Nation & World
Researchers report successful new laser treatment for vocal-cord cancer
An innovative laser treatment for early vocal-cord cancer, developed at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), successfully restores patients’ voices without radiotherapy or traditional surgery, which can permanently damage vocal quality.
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Nation & World
Newsmakers
RUVKUN RECEIVES GAIRDNER AWARD; HARVARD PROFESSOR ELECTED TO LEAD HUMANE SOCIETY BOARD; PHARR RECEIVES JAPANESE AWARD
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Nation & World
Janet Ward McArthur
Janet Ward McArthur was born in Bellingham, WA, on June 25, 1914 and died at the age of 92 among friends at North Hill, Needham MA, on October 6, 2006.
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Nation & World
Exercise changes structure of heart
Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) investigators, in collaboration with Harvard University Health Services, have found that 90 days of vigorous athletic training produces significant changes in cardiac structure and function, and that the type of change varies with the type of exercise performed.
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Nation & World
Genetics key in new knowledge about complex diseases
Genetic researchers crossed a critical threshold last year in their ability to understand complex diseases, posting a number of new discoveries that advanced knowledge of ailments caused by small contributions from multiple genes, the environment, and other causes.
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Nation & World
Study shows indicator for cardiovascular events
A study appearing in this week’s (March 19) New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) confirms that a combination of gene variants previously associated with cholesterol levels does reflect patients’ cholesterol levels and can signify increased risk of heart attack, stroke, or sudden cardiac death. Led by researchers from the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) cardiology division,…
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Nation & World
MGH initiates Phase I of its diabetes trial
Scientists at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) have initiated a Phase I clinical trial to reverse type 1 diabetes. The trial is exploring whether the promising results from the laboratory of Denise Faustman can be applied in human diabetes.
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Nation & World
Increasing U.S. support could save a million South Africans by 2012
More that 1.2 million deaths could be prevented in South Africa over the next five years by accelerating efforts to provide access to antiretroviral therapy (ART), according to a study released March 13 in the Journal of Infectious Diseases.
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Nation & World
MGH receives Gates Foundation grant
The Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) has received a five-year, $20.5 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to expand an international program investigating the biological factors underlying immune system control of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. The grant provides support to the International HIV Controllers Study, which currently involves researchers from more…
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Nation & World
Late treatment with letrozole can reduce cancer recurrence risk
Treatment with the aromatase inhibitor letrozole (Femara) can reduce the risk of breast cancer recurrence even when initiated one to seven years after a course of tamoxifen therapy. The results of a study involving women originally in the placebo arm of an international trial of letrozole will appear in the Journal of Clinical Oncology and…
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Nation & World
Gene variants probably increase risk for anxiety disorders
Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) researchers — in collaboration with scientists at the University of California, San Diego, and Yale University — have discovered perhaps the strongest evidence yet linking variation in a particular gene with anxiety-related traits. In the March issue of Archives of General Psychiatry, the team describes finding that particular versions of a…
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Nation & World
From adult to embryonic stem cell
Harvard Stem Cell Institute (HSCI) and Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) researchers have taken a major step toward eventually being able to reprogram adult cells to an embryonic stem cell-like state without the use of viruses or cancer-causing genes.
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Nation & World
Cancer stem cells can be targeted for destruction
It’s increasingly believed among scientists that nearly every cancer contains small populations of highly dangerous cells — cancer stem cells — that can initiate a cancer, drive its progression, and create endless copies of themselves. On the theory that targeting these cells might be an effective therapeutic strategy, researchers around the world have begun isolating…
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Nation & World
Drug helps certain brain tumor patients live longer
People who receive high doses of the chemotherapy drug methotrexate to treat a certain type of brain tumor appear to live longer than people receiving other treatments, according to research published in the Jan. 29 issue of Neurology, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.
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Nation & World
Increasing growth hormone release reduces abdominal fat
Treatment with an investigational drug that induces the release of growth hormone significantly improved the symptoms of HIV lipodystrophy, a condition involving redistribution of fat and other metabolic changes in patients receiving combination drug therapy for HIV infection.