Featured series 
Tag: Pathology
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Health
Volunteers juice COVID testing at Beth Israel
An outpouring of volunteers and equipment from the Harvard medical community have helped a Harvard hospital testing lab meet COVID’s challenge.
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Science & Tech
A closer look at atherosclerosis
Researchers at the Wellman Center for Photomedicine at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) have developed a one-micrometer-resolution version of the intravascular imaging technology optical coherence tomography (OCT) that can reveal cellular and subcellular features of coronary artery disease.
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Campus & Community
Three Harvard scientists named Pew Scholars
Assistant Professor of Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology Fernando Camargo, Assistant Professor of Pathology at Harvard Medical School (HMS) Alexander Gimelbrant, and Sun Hur, assistant professor of biological chemistry and molecular pharmacology at HMS, have been named 2010 Pew Scholars in the biomedical sciences by the Pew Charitable Trusts.
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Campus & Community
William Avison Meissner
William “Bill” Avison Meissner, former Harvard Medical School clinical professor of pathology and emeritus professor of pathology at the New England Deaconess Hospital, died on Dec. 6, 2008, at age 95. Meissner’s expertise was in thyroid, soft tissue, and oropharyngeal tumors.
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Health
Alzheimer’s for humans only
Disorders that result in severe neurological decline, such as Alzheimer’s disease, are not found in other animals, meaning that humans acquired their predisposition to the disease during recent evolution.
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Campus & Community
BIDMC geneticist Rinn named to Popular Science’s ‘Brilliant 10’
Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center geneticist John Rinn, whose research has helped uncover a new class of RNA, has been named to this year’s “Brilliant 10” list of top young scientists by Popular Science magazine.
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Health
A Genetic Cause for Iron Deficiency
The discovery of a gene for a rare form of inherited iron deficiency may provide clues to iron deficiency in the general population – particularly iron deficiency that doesn’t respond to iron supplements. The finding was published online by the journal Nature Genetics on April 13. Iron deficiency is the most common nutritional deficiency and…
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Health
Pursuing a cholera vaccine
The reports from Dhaka are hopeful. It is 2005, and Dr. Firdausi Qadri and colleagues at the International Center for Diarrheal Disease Research, Bangladesh, are testing a new cholera vaccine on children. In their study, a single dose of live, crippled bacteria goes down easily in a fizzy drink. Within days, most of the children…
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Campus & Community
$1M prize for the discovery of biomarker for ALS
Prize4Life Inc., the nonprofit organization founded by Harvard Business School (HBS) alumni Nathan Boaz and Andrea Marano and student Avi Kremer, announced earlier this month that it will award a $1 million prize for researchers who discover a biomarker for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease. A biomarker is a distinctive…
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Science & Tech
Three-dimensional, miniature endoscope opens new diagnostic possibilities
Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) researchers have developed a new type of miniature endoscope that produces three-dimensional, high-definition images, which may greatly expand the application of minimally invasive diagnostic and therapeutic procedures. In the Oct. 19, 2006, issue of Nature, the team from the Wellman Center for Photomedicine at MGH describes their prototype device and a…
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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
Depression linked to previously unknown dopamine regulator
Li-Huei Tsai, Harvard Medical School (HMS) professor of pathology, HMS research fellow Sang Ki Park, and colleagues worked with mice and found a novel function for the molecule Par-4 (prostate apoptosis response 4) as a binding partner for dopamine receptor D2. When mice deficient in Par-4 were subjected to stress, they showed depression-like behaviors, proposing…
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Health
Urine test may help monitor disfiguring birthmarks
Vascular anomalies include both vascular malformations and vascular tumors (most commonly hemangiomas). Hemangiomas, found in about 10 percent of infants, occur when the cells lining blood vessels multiply abnormally. Hemangiomas grow rapidly in the first year of life, then usually shrink and disappear. But some grow large, causing obstruction, ulceration, and other problems. Vascular malformations…
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Health
Drug combination boosts survival rate in head and neck cancers
Previous studies have shown that using combination chemotherapy of cisplatin and 5-fu yields a 25 to 50 percent rate of complete pathological responses (the tumor disappeared). Robert Haddad, M.D., and his colleagues found that adding the drug docetaxel to the cisplatin and 5-fu regimen significantly increased the complete pathological response rate to 89 percent. Using…
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Health
Researchers find better way to predict stroke risk in sickle cell anemia patients
Researchers from Children’s Hospital Boston, Boston University School of Public Health (BUSPH), Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM), Boston Medical Center (BMC) and Harvard Medical School have developed a novel approach to predict the risk of stroke in these patients using their genetic variations. This approach is based on a data mining method called Bayesian…
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Health
Urine test tracks deadly birthmarks
Although not yet approved by the Food and Drug Administration, results from simple urine tests are already being used to guide treatment of children with disfiguring birthmarks and adults with cancer. Urine tests, now given to all people as part of every physical, might someday provide doctors with valuable information difficult to obtain by other…
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Health
Researchers shed light on myotonic muscular dystrophy
Research by scientists at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) helps to explain the wide range of signs and symptoms associated with myotonic muscular dystrophy (MMD). The findings appeared in the Dec. 4, 2003 issue of Science Express, the advance online edition of the journal Science. “Typically in genetic diseases, a mutation affects a single…
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Health
Researchers find way to block SARS virus from entering cells and spreading infection
SARS – severe acute respiratory syndrome – is a viral respiratory illness caused by coronavirus, a family of viruses also implicated in the common cold. SARS is a distinct form of the coronavirus that was first identified in Asia in February 2003 and eventually resulted in a worldwide outbreak over a span of a few…
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Health
Regeneration of insulin-producing islets may lead to diabetes cure
Type 1 diabetes develops when the body’s immune cells mistakenly attack the insulin-producing islet cells of the pancreas. As islet cells die, insulin production ceases, and blood sugar levels rise, damaging organs throughout the body. Cells from an unexpected source, the spleen, appear to develop into insulin-producing pancreatic islet cells in adult animals. This surprising…
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Health
Enzyme linked to pathology of Parkinson’s disease appears two-faced
A finding by Harvard Medical School researchers adds a new wrinkle to the story of Parkinson’s disease and insight into how failure to dispose of proteins can wreak havoc on a cell. Much research has focused on how the aggregated proteins found in neurodegenerative diseases like Parkinson’s are produced, overproduced, folded, and eventually clumped together.…
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Health
Glowing mouse shows how immune alarm rallies troops against invasion
In the body, dendritic and other antigen-presenting cells initially handle all infections in the body. The dendritic cells lurk in the skin, lungs, gut, and other tissues. On sentry duty, they continually snack on things around them, which might include a pathogenic bacterium. When a dendritic cell has gobbled a germ, it stops snacking and…
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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
Researchers uncover remaining critical insulin gene regulatory factor
Scientists have known the identity of two genes that can influence the ability of insulin genes to trigger insulin production in the beta cells of the pancreas. Through subsequent research it has been demonstrated that these two genes are at least partially responsible for a form of diabetes called maturity onset diabetes of the young…
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Health
New molecular model increases longevity and could allow you to eat cake, too
Scientists have known about the longevity benefits of caloric restriction since experiments in the 1930s showed that rats lived much longer if their food intake was severely restricted. Broadly speaking, the reason is stress. Although usually viewed as the enemy of good health, stress can actually boost longevity, driving an organism to slow down metabolism…
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Health
New tool speeds study of mammalian protein function
A new technology developed by Harvard Medical School researchers in the laboratory of Yang Shi, associate professor of pathology, extends the range of possibilities of selective interference of gene expression without having to manipulate DNA in the egg or embryo. The new technology makes it possible to turn off genes in a highly specific manner,…
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Health
No innocent bystanders
When cancer cells begin to do their destructive work, they have accomplices — normal cells that help nourish the cancerous ones. As Jack Lawler, Harvard Medical School associate professor of pathology at Beth Israel Deaconess, puts it, there are no innocent bystanders in the process. “Previous research focused on the genetics of the cancer cell,”…
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Health
Resistance to antibodies is reversed
It’s a frightening — and increasingly common — problem. A patient seeks treatment for a particular ailment in a hospital and develops an entirely different disease: a bacterial infection that is resistant to antibiotics. Researchers have worked to come up with better and more powerful antibiotics, but even an antibiotic such as vancomycin, which used…
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Health
Researchers discover new type of cancer
A team led by a Harvard researcher has identified a new type of cancer that primarily affects young girls. Sara Vargas, an instructor in pathology at Harvard Medical School and a researcher in the Department of Pathology at Children’s Hospital in Boston, led the study that identified the new syndrome. The cancer is characterized by…