Health

Scientists have reached a critical milestone in the study of liver cancer that lays the groundwork for predicting the illness’s path, whether toward cure or recurrence. By analyzing the tissue in and around liver tumors, an international research team has identified a kind of genetic “fingerprint” that can help predict whether cancers will return.

Decades after predicting Latinos will become California’s majority, a leading researcher into Latino health argued Wednesday (Oct. 8) that the development might mean a healthier population.

Caffeine consumption does not appear to be associated with overall breast cancer risk, according to a report in the Oct. 13 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals. However, there is a possibility of increased risk for women with benign breast disease or for tumors that are hormone-receptor negative or larger than 2 centimeters.

Ken Ishitani of Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, and Tokyo Women’s Medical University, Japan, and colleagues report in the Oct. 13 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine…

Imagine, if you can, a day within the next decade when a physician-scientist could remove a skin cell from your arm, and with a few chemicals turn that fully formed adult cell into a dish of stem cells genetically matched to you.

Engineer, entrepreneur, and philanthropist Hansjörg Wyss, M.B.A. ’65 has given Harvard University $125 million to create the Hansjörg Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering.

Higher levels of testosterone are correlated with financial risk-taking behavior, according to a new study in which men’s testosterone levels were assessed before participation in an investment game. The findings help to shed light on the evolutionary function and biological origins of risk taking.

A team of Harvard Stem Cell Institute (HSCI) scientists has taken an important step toward producing induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells that are safe to transplant into patients to treat diseases. Excitement over the ability of researchers to create this form of stem cell by inserting four genes into adult cells has thus far been tempered by the fact that the genes have been inserted using retroviruses, which have the potential to “turn on” cancer genes and trigger tumor growth.

Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) researchers are investigating a new approach to gene therapy for brain tumors — delivering a cancer-fighting gene to normal brain tissue around the tumor to keep it from spreading. An animal study described in the journal Molecular Therapy, the first study to test the feasibility of such an approach, found that inducing mouse brain cells to secrete human interferon-beta, a protein, suppressed and eliminated growth of human glioblastoma cells implanted nearby.

Researchers at Harvard Medical School and the University of Wisconsin, Madison, have discovered how beetles and bacteria form a symbiotic and mutualistic relationship — one that ultimately results in the…

Julio Frenk, who will become Dean of Harvard School of Public Health in January, 2009, has received a Clinton Global Citizen Award.  In naming Frenk, along with four other individuals,…

Bruce Walker recalls sitting across from a person long-infected with HIV who never took antiretroviral drugs and never developed AIDS. Walker remembers thinking that the person’s body held a secret of which even they were unaware: how to stop the global AIDS pandemic.

It was a long drive from St. Louis to Florida, but Darlene Ketten had finally made it. Standing in the warm surf of St. George Island, she watched with delight as tiny, colorful bean clams popped out of the sand and then quickly reburied themselves as the waves foamed around her calves.

December will mark the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a United Nations convention that in 30 articles memorializes basic freedoms involving speech, property, health, security, and the rule of law.

Harvard may be rooted in Cambridge, but it has a lot more roots in the small north-central Massachusetts town of Petersham. That’s where you’ll find the woods, streams, and fields of the Harvard Forest, a 3,500-acre research and teaching facility that’s been part of the University for more than a century. Having been closely monitored since 1907 — and with a provenance dating to a Colonial farm established in the mid 1700s — the history of this tract is likely better-documented than that of any other forest in the United States.

New discoveries concerning cell reprogramming over the past year have boosted stem cell researchers in the lab and encouraged efforts to transfer test tube and lab animal advances to humans suffering degenerative diseases such as diabetes, Parkinson’s disease, and Lou Gehrig’s disease.

A team of Harvard Stem Cell Institute (HSCI) scientists has taken an important step toward producing induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells that are safe to transplant into patients to treat…

A significant percentage of resident physicians report that patient handoffs – transfer of responsibility for a hospitalized patient from one resident to another – contributed to incidents in which harm…

Harvard faculty members comprise almost 20 percent of the 47 scientists nationally whose promising and innovative work was today recognized with the announcement of two grant programs through the National…

Two scientists who discovered that specific types of human papillomavirus, or HPV, cause cancer of the cervix received the 20th annual Warren Alpert Foundation Scientific Prize on Sept. 15. As part of the day’s celebration, the prize winners Harald zur Hausen and Lutz Gissmann — both professors at the German Cancer Research Center in Heidelberg — delivered talks at a symposium in Harvard Medical School’s New Research Building (NRB).

The Immune Disease Institute has received a two-year, $150,000 award from the Annenberg Foundation to support its ongoing work in international health. The funds will support efforts to combine basic…

Gary Ruvkun, a Harvard Medical School genetics professor in the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) Center for Computational and Integrative Biology, is one of three scientists named co-recipients of the 2008…

The Harvard Initiative for Global Health (HIGH) has been selected to receive a prestigious $400,000 Framework Programs for Global Health grant from the National Institutes of Health’s Fogarty International Center.…

On a hill in South Africa’s KwaZulu Natal province, near the hall where Nelson Mandela delivered his last speech before prison and the station where Mahatma Gandhi was tossed off a train to begin his life’s work, stands Edendale Hospital.

“I just want to see how bad things are in the clinic,” Jennifer Furin said. “It’s a ‘doctor fear’ that someone is bleeding out while I’m standing here eating chocolate.”

What does Jack LaLanne have in common with a Jamaican lizard? Like the ageless fitness guru, the lizards greet each new day with vigorous push-ups. That’s according to a new study showing that male Anolis lizards engage in impressive displays of reptilian strength — push-ups, head bobs, and threatening extension of a colorful neck flap called a “dewlap” — to defend their territory at dawn and dusk.

In a feat of biological prestidigitation likely to turn the field of regenerative medicine on its head, Harvard Stem Cell Institute (HSCI) co-director Doug Melton and postdoctoral fellow Qiao “Joe” Zhou report having achieved what has long been a dream and ultimate goal of developmental biologists — directly turning a fully formed adult cell into another kind of fully formed, functioning adult cell.

Just five years after the Human Genome Project announced it had decoded the first human DNA, the era of personal genetics is dawning, bringing with it not just the promise of targeted, personalized medicine and a new level of self-knowledge, but also a host of ethical, legal, and practical issues. A new project out of a Harvard Medical School genetics lab is trying to make sure we’re prepared to deal with the potential benefits and pitfalls arising from these issues.

Some of the most challenging obstacles limiting the reprogramming of mature human cells into stem cells may not seem quite as daunting in the near future. Two independent research groups,…

Someday doctors may be able to use a blood test to confirm within minutes, instead of hours, if a patient is having a heart attack, allowing more rapid treatment that…