Ruhul Abid, HMS assistant professor of medicine at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, will be recognized April 29 with the 2011 Werner Risau New Investigator Award in Vascular Biology. His paper, “Endothelium-dependent Coronary Vasodilatation Requires NADPH Oxidase-derived ROS,” was selected as the most outstanding paper published during 2010 in the vascular biology section of the journal Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis and Vascular Biology.
Donna Berry, HMS associate professor of medicine and director of the Cantor Center for Research in Nursing and Patient Care Services at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, will accept the Oncology Nursing Society’s Distinguished Researcher Award at the 2011 ONS Congress in Boston on April 28. Berry is widely recognized for her research involving patient-centered oncology care and leadership within oncology research.
Constance Cepko, HMS professor of genetics and professor of ophthalmology, has received the 2011 Alfred W. Bressler Prize in Vision Science. The prize, announced March 8 by the Jewish Guild for the Blind, recognizes her discoveries of the causes of retinal degeneration in retinitis pigmentosa (RP) and possible future therapeutic benefits to humans. The Cepko lab discovered in a mouse model of RP that cone cell death is primarily caused by a nutritional deficit resulting after rod death. Cone life can be prolonged by injecting the mice with insulin. Future applications may allow people with RP to maintain daylight and color vision longer.
Jeffrey S. Flier, dean of the Faculty of Medicine, received the international Rolf Luft Award from the Karolinska Institute in Sweden on March 16 for seminal contributions to the understanding of the physiology of insulin and leptin and the mechanisms underlying their defective action in metabolic diseases. Flier gave the prize lecture, “Hormone Resistance in Diabetes and Obesity: Insulin, Leptin and FGF21.”
Flier’s contributions to the understanding of obesity and insulin resistance have had a significant impact on lipid research, particularly in the arena of leptin action and resistance. He is credited with the groundbreaking observation that leptin is likely to be the key signal that informs the brain of the transition between the adequately nourished and the starved state. Flier has also made substantive contributions to research on the metabolic syndrome as well as on insulin action and resistance.
Previous Luft honorees at HMS include C. Ronald Kahn, Mary K. Iacocca Professor of Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Joslin Diabetes Center; Bruce Spiegelman, the Stanley J. Korsmeyer Professor of Cell Biology and Medicine at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute; and Lewis Cantley, the William Bosworth Castle Professor of Medicine at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.
Donald Ingber, founding director of the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University, has been inducted into the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering’s College of Fellows on the basis of his major contributions to cell and tissue engineering, angiogenesis and cancer research, systems biology, and nanobiotechnology. Ingber, the Judah Folkman Professor of Vascular Biology in the Department of Pathology at Children’s Hospital Boston, is recognized for his pioneering efforts in the emerging field of biologically inspired engineering.
JoAnn Manson, the Elizabeth Fay Brigham professor of women’s health at HMS and Brigham and Women’s Hospital, recently received the 2010 Population Research Prize from the American Heart Association. The award recognizes Manson’s achievement as a physician, teacher and investigator in the field of population science. Manson, who is chief of the BWH Division of Preventive Medicine, has conducted clinical trials in preventive medicine and women’s health, elucidating critical biological and genetic determinants of cardiovascular disease and diabetes.
