Past successes
Animal research at Harvard Medical School and its affiliated hospitals has enabled modern-day treatments including:
- Surgical repair of congenital heart defects.
- Surgical repair of diseased heart valves.
- Modern-day cancer chemotherapy.
- The first kidney transplant.
- The design of implantable cardiac pacemakers to control aberrant heart rhythms.
- Nobel Prize-winning discoveries on the development and organization of the visual system transform the treatment of pediatric vision disorders including congenital cataracts, strabismus, and amblyopia.
- Vision-saving therapy that halts the growth of blood vessels in certain forms of macular degeneration.
- Development of improved brain imaging techniques for early diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease.
- Development of novel cellular and pharmacological strategies for treatment of Parkinson’s disease.
- A type of precision-targeted chemotherapy for multiple myeloma and mantle cell lymphoma.
- A treatment for chronic myelogenous leukemia (CML), now also used for certain other cancers
- Brain stimulation therapy for tremor.
- Discovery of proteins called integrins that leads to the design of therapies for ulcerative colitis, Crohn’s disease, and multiple sclerosis.
- Identification of a family of gut hormones, which led to a new class of medicines for diabetes
- Treatment for certain types of soft-tissue tumors called sarcomas.
- Viral-vector vaccine for COVID.
- Cancer immunotherapies for the treatment of multiple cancers, including melanoma, lung, bladder, head-and-neck, colorectal, cervical, kidney, and stomach cancers, and more.
Learn about more about the history of HMS discoveries.
Ongoing work
In their unending quest to understand the roots of disease and design new therapies, Harvard Medical School scientists continue to rely on animal models to:
- Probe the fundamental workings of cells, genes, organs, and the microbiome
- Seek diagnoses and treatments for rare diseases.
- Understand how the blood–brain barrier works and how it can be used to treat an array of diseases that affect the brain and the central nervous system.
- Understand how bacteria invade the brain to cause meningitis.
- Understand the molecular roots of ALS and develop treatments for this fatal neurodegenerative disease.
- Understand why and how cancers arise and how they evade treatment and become resistant to therapy.
- Understand the role of the microbiome in neurodevelopmental and inflammatory conditions.
- Understand brain development and brain plasticity.
- Understand the molecular basis of touch hypersensitivity in neurodevelopmental disorders.
- Understand the molecular basis of neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s and frontotemporal dementia.
- Correct genetic disorders that underlie hearing loss and blindness.
- Design new ways to optimize CAR-T cell therapies for cancer and make them available for more patients who need them.
- Learn about and try to mitigate the biological impacts of climate change.
- Get inspiration for new medical technologies.
- Explore the extension of life span and health span.
- Reveal how chemicals in our environment affect health.
- Illuminate embryonic development and evolution.