Two HMS faculty members were appointed to new leadership positions in July. David Cohen, HMS associate professor of medicine and health sciences technology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, was named co-director of the Harvard–MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology, a responsibility he shares with Martha Gray of MIT. He replaced Joseph Bonventre, the Robert H. Ebert professor of medicine and health sciences and technology at BWH, who had been co-director since 1998
Cohen’s lab studies the mechanisms that allow the liver to remove cholesterol from the blood and eliminate it from the body, which has clinical implications for cardiovascular, gastrointestinal, and obesity-related disease. He was the first to identify the role phosphatidylcholine, a lipid-binding protein, plays in directing the movement of cholesterol in liver cells. His group also studies the impact of obesity on hepatic cholesterol metabolism and identified the regulatory role of leptin.
Stephen Blacklow, HMS associate professor of pathology at BWH, became the basic sciences director in the MD–PhD program. Blacklow had served as interim director since February, when Christopher A. Walsh, the Bullard professor of neurology, stepped down from the position.
Blacklow’s research focuses on the relationship between structure and function in proteins in the LDL receptor (LDLR) family. His lab studies the mechanisms for ligand binding and release by the LDLR and signal transduction by structurally related proteins. He also studies the structure and function of human Notch receptors, with a focus on the LIN12 domain, which consists of three conserved extracellular modules that are required to maintain the receptors in the resting state prior to ligand-induced activation.
