Featured series 
Tag: Work in Progress
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Health
Study upends earlier thinking about immune cell’s readiness against disease
A type of disease-fighting cells in the body — T cells — have a reputation for being ever-ready to fight invading infections. But that’s not the way they really work, found Vassiliki Boussiotis, an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School and a researcher at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston. Boussiotis and her colleagues found that…
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Health
Researchers explain how protein inhibits growth of blood vessels
Thirty years ago, Judah Folkman, of Children’s Hospital Boston and Harvard Medical School, first developed the idea that cancerous tumors are dependent on the growth of small blood vessels. Since then, Folkman and other researchers have sought a way to block the growth of cancer tumors through restricting or eliminating the small blood vessels that…
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Health
Study reveals how child abuse can lead to substance abuse
It’s a common-sense notion that those who have been abused as children may became drug abusers later in life. But why is this so? Carl Anderson, a Harvard instructor in psychiatry and a research associate in McLean Hospital’s Developmental Biopsychiatry Research Laboratory and Brain Imaging Center, and his colleagues investigated. They found that repeated sexual…
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Health
Study finds embryonic stem cells can repair heart muscle
Heart failure develops when the heart stops pumping effectively due to the destruction of muscle cells, known as cardiomyocytes. Damage inflicted during a heart attack causes massive loss of cardiomyocytes, resulting in ventricular dysfunction. Although heart transplantation has proven very successful, only a small number of organs are actually available for transplant each year. That’s…
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Health
High levels of Epstein-Barr virus antibodies in women linked to risk of multiple sclerosis
Multiple sclerosis is a chronic degenerative disease of the central nervous system. Nationwide, there are an estimated 250,000 to 350,000 people with MS. Researchers have long wondered how MS develops and why it targets certain individuals, though they have long suspected that a virus was involved. Alberto Ascherio, associate professor in the Departments of Epidemiology…
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Science & Tech
User fees have unintended effect of decreasing health care access for poor
The reform of health care systems is supposed to make access to health care better. But in the particular case of user fees, the opposite effect was observed. During the 1980s and 1990s, health sector reforms to improve the efficiency of health systems and the quality of care provided were implemented in low-income countries, mainly…
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Science & Tech
Grants vs . investment subsidies
In many countries, governments face policy decisions about how to help poor people who have difficulty helping themselves because they can’t borrow money. What is the proper form of intervention? What role is it best for the government to fulfill? Should the government just give poor people money, in the form of a grant? Or…
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Health
Pain and pleasure activate same brain structures
David Borsook is a Harvard Medical School associate professor of radiology, who both treats patients and conducts research. “Over 15 years of seeing patients with pain it became obvious that we do not have good methods of assessing chronic pain,” Borsook says. “And we do not have good methods for treating it.” So Borsook and…
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Science & Tech
Diagnosis by database shows promise
A relatively new approach to researching cancer involves looking at the actions of thousands of genes in cancer tumors. This technique just recently became possible because, using new applications of technology, researchers are able to make “diagnoses by database.” At Harvard Medical School, several teams of researchers have recently discovered new types of cancer or…
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Health
Technique enables quick accounting of gene function
Now that whole genomes have been sequenced, a group of scientists has geared up for the next phase: identification and classification of newly discovered coding regions. The DNA microchip, developed just a few years ago, has already become a standard tool in the geneticist’s repertoire. With genomic sequence in hand, the researcher can synthesize all…
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Health
Polarity gene yields clues to organization of cell signaling, structural growth
Researchers are beginning to understand how a gene called “stardust” works to set up the basic top-down architecture of the epithelial cells that line the gut, skin, and many other organs of an embryo. Working with Norbert Perrimon, Harvard Medical School (HMS) professor of genetics, Beth Stronach, HMS research fellow in genetics, has cloned the…
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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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Health
Lithium drugs found to reduce suicide risk
Researchers who wondered about the effectiveness of lithium drugs in treating patients with severe depression analyzed 22 studies involving 5,647 patients. The scientists, working at Harvard-affiliated McLean Hospital in Belmont, found through their analysis that those who took the drug showed a nine-fold lower rate of suicide compared to those who did not. “The evidence…
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Science & Tech
Looking toward the end
Among astronomers there is almost a consensus that universal expansion will go on forever, with galaxies and clusters of galaxies moving away from each other so fast that gravity cannot ever pull them together. Since 1998, astronomers have found good evidence that this expansion is accelerating, that galaxies are separating at ever-increasing speed. But what…
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Science & Tech
Scientists using gene chips identify unique form of leukemia
Currently, physicians diagnose and treat a rare form of cancer that strikes infants as a particularly aggressive form of the more common acute lymphoblastic leukemia. The cancer may respond to chemotherapy at first, but it tends to recur fatally. That’s why the prognosis is so much worse than for most types of childhood leukemia, which…
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Health
Early exposure to Ritalin may blunt desire for cocaine later in life
There are several controversies surrounding the use of Ritalin, or methylphenidate, a stimulant prescribed for children who have an abnormally high level of activity or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). While Ritalin appears to calm hyperactive children, some worry that it may lead to the abuse of other drugs later in life. However, in a…
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Health
Comprehensive set of vision genes discovered
Using a computer program that compares bits of genetic material taken from tissue in the retinas of mice against records in a huge genetic data base from the mouse and human genome project, Harvard Medical School researchers identified approximately 300 photoreceptor genes. That is five times the number of retinal genes that were previously known.…
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Health
Whole genes delivered to cells
To make a protein, a cell’s enzymes typically edit out about 90 percent of the information along the length of a DNA strand that makes up a whole gene. In their labs, scientists usually do the same. However, there may be something biologically important in those seemingly disposable chunks of DNA material. Harvard Medical School…
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Health
“Commoner” in brain crowns the cortex
With its role in higher cognitive functions, the cortex represents a significant evolutionary development in mammals, culminating in the enlarged hemispheres of humans and other primates. In the development of this crowning structure, neurons are guided by factors that are both genetic and environmental. A research team led by Christopher A. Walsh, the Bullard professor…
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Health
The fruit fly fight club
Fruit flies fight. The males will go after each other, fighting to establish dominance. Edward Kravitz, the George Packer Berry professor of neurobiology at Harvard Medical School, is using the fighting fruit fly model system to explore the neurobiology of aggression. Previously Kravitz has used fighting lobsters to study changes in the brain that occur…
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Science & Tech
Analysis of potential mad cow risk in U.S. finds little chance of disease spread
The Harvard Center for Risk Analysis (HCRA), part of the Harvard School of Public Health, performed an analysis for the U.S. Department of Agriculture to determine what the effects would be if “mad cow” disease were introduced into the United States. Mad cow disease, which is the popular term for bovine spongiform encephalopathy, has not…
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Science & Tech
New study provides mixed report card on informed consent to cancer clinical trials
According to a study that appeared in the Nov. 24, 2001, issue of The Lancet, nearly one quarter of cancer patients who participate in clinical trials do not realize that the trials are conducted mainly to benefit future patients, not themselves. Many patients are unaware that experimental treatments are not yet proven to be better…
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Health
Research suggests optimistic attitude can reduce risk of heart disease in older men
Researchers from the Harvard School of Public Health, working with colleagues from the Department of Veterans Affairs, studied some 1,306 Boston area men who were part of the Veterans Affairs Normative Aging Study. In 1986, the volunteers completed a questionnaire that judged whether they were optimistic or pessimistic. They all were healthy individuals with no…
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Health
Immune system discovery may lead to preventive therapy for diabetes
The job of cells known as iNKT cells is to regulate the immune system’s response to infections and other disorders, ensuring that only diseased tissue, not healthy tissue, is targeted for attack. Type I diabetes, an “autoimmune” disorder, occurs when the immune system mistakenly attacks healthy insulin-producing cells in the pancreas. A new study involved…
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Health
Cell protein potently blocks enzyme linked to cancer
The ends of chromosomes in normal cells eventually unravel, causing the cells to die. This does not happen in cancer cells, however. Cancer cells use an enzyme named telomerase to rebuild the chromosome ends, which are called telomeres, in essence making cancer cells immortal. Since the discovery of the link between telomerase and cancer, scientists…
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Health
Dopamine may play dual role in Parkinson’s disease
According to the Parkinson’s Disease Foundation, “Parkinson’s disease (PD) is a disorder of the central nervous system that affects between one and one-and-a-half million Americans. Because it is not contagious and does not have to be reported by physicians, the incidence of the disease is often underestimated. PD may appear at any age, but it…
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Health
“Heart of glass” may be more than just a metaphor
Jeffrey Fredberg is a professor of bioengineering and physiology at the Harvard School of Public Health. His primary research interest is asthma. Fredberg was intrigued by the plasticity of the smooth muscle cells that surround the lung’s airways, and which are impaired in asthma, so he and some colleagues began to probe the mechanical properties…
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Science & Tech
Survey shows Americans not panicking over anthrax
In the wake of biological terror attacks perpetrated by unknown persons sending anthrax-laced letters through the U.S. mail, the Harvard School of Public Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation launched their Survey Project on Americans’ Response to Biological Terrorism. The first report of the ongoing survey, released on Nov. 8, 2001, found that most…