Some people collect stamps, others vintage cars. As a young Ph.D. student at Cambridge University in the 1980s, Claude Wischik was on a mission to collect brains in an attempt to answer a riddle still puzzling the scientific community: What causes Alzheimer’s disease? Dennis Selkoe, the Vincent and Stella Coates Professor of Neurologic Diseases in the Department of Neurology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, is quoted.
Researchers at Harvard’s Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering have developed “lung-on-a-chip” technology that mimics the effects of pulmonary edema, a medical condition caused by fluid build up in the lung’s air sacs. The study was led by Dan Huh, in collaboration with Wyss Postdoctoral Fellow Daniel Leslie; and a multidisciplinary team including Geraldine Hamilton, HMS senior staff scientist; Wyss Founding Director Donald Ingber; and Ben Matthews, HMS assistant professor of pediatrics at Boston Children’s Hospital.
Twenty-three teams of scientists from around the world have combed through the DNA blueprints of an 11-year-old boy and his parents to try to learn why he tired so easily, needing a scooter to walk longer than a few blocks and requiring a ventilator to help him breathe at night. The winner of a $15,000 prize was the Division of Clinical Genetics at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Alan Beggs, Sir Edwin and Lady Manton Professor of Pediatrics at Boston Children’s Hospital, was a coorganizer of the contest.
John Lauerman writes about the experience of having his genome sequenced and the results he received. Joseph Thakuria, HMS instructor in pediatrics at Massachusetts General Hospital; Robert Handin, HMS professor of medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital; and David Kuter, HMS professor of medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital, are quoted. The work of George Church, the Robert Winthrop
Professor of Genetics, is also cited. John Lauerman was an HMS 2012 Media Fellow.
A new study says 150 minutes a week of moderate-intensity, leisure time exercise is associated with roughly 3.4 years added to a person’s life. I-Min Lee, HMS professor of medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, is the senior author of the study.
Attention is increasingly being drawn to incentives that are altering medical decisions, driving up costs and channeling men into prostate treatment that delivers negligible benefits when compared to less-expensive care, according to three studies in the past two years and seven doctors who’ve studied prostate treatment. Anthony Zietman, the Jenot W. and William U. Shipley Professor of Radiation Oncology, is quoted.
