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FACULTY SYMPOSIUM Talks Demonstrate Community of Research and EducationThe June 8 morning Faculty Symposium offered HMS alumni a showcase of collaborative research and education efforts under way within the Harvard medical community. Raphael Dolin, dean for clinical programs, moderated the session and began with an overview of collective clinical research efforts at the School and affiliated institutions.
Andrea Dunaif, director of the HMS Center for Excellence in Women's Health, was one of several faculty symposium speakers who conveyed to alumni the aura of excitement and anticipation generated by new collaborative efforts within the Harvard medical community. Photo by Liza Green William Crowley, HMS professor of medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital, followed with a talk on melding clinical and genetic ap-proaches to understanding the neuroendocrine control of human reproduction. He described how rare disorders of gonadal function, such as Kallmann's syndrome, can serve as "prismatic windows" opening onto a wide range of disease processes. Crowley traced the progress of research in reproductive disorders, which has now given clinicians the ability to restore fertility to some patients through pulsed hormone delivery that mimics normal endo-crine function. Discoveries in this field have application for delayed and precocious puberty, amenorrhea, and—perhaps most importantly when the world's population has doubled to six billion in 40 years—contraception. Genes important in reproduction are turning out to have significant roles in other phases of development and throughout biology, he added. Steven Weinberger, faculty associate dean for education and HMS professor of medicine at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, presented an overview of the Carl J. Shapiro Institute for Education and Research at BID. He gave a demonstration of the virtual patient project, a computerized teaching tool for students in clinical clerkships that was developed at the institute. "The virtual patient gives us the opportunity to expose students to patient problems they might not otherwise see" during their education, he said, and compresses patient encounters that would be longitudinal in reality into a short virtual time. Andrea Dunaif, HMS associate professor of medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital, sketched the activities of the Harvard National Center for Excellence in Women's Health, which she directs. She noted the burgeoning interest in women's health in recent years since large gender differences in disease have been identified. Her discussion focused on polycystic ovary disease, the most common reproductive disorder in women of childbearing age, and the search for genes associated with this condition. Another HMS-centered collaboration, the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation Center for Islet Cell Transplantation, was highlighted by Hugh Auchincloss Jr., HMS professor of surgery at MGH. The "bold new strategy" embodied in the center is based on the conviction that "it is possible to cure juvenile diabetes," if scientists and clinicians with the right combination of expertise are brought together to work on the problem, he said. He described advances and barriers to the success of islet transplantation and noted that the center will be one of eight in the U.S and Europe to take part in a clinical trial of the "Edmonton protocol," a promising development in the field. Likewise energized by new prospects for cures was David G. Nathan, president of the Dana–Farber Cancer Institute and the Richard and Susan Smith professor of medicine at HMS. He described the complementary strengths of the institutions composing the new Dana–Farber/Harvard Cancer Center, noting that "the opportunity to get rid of cancer is really massive right now ... on both the prevention and treatment fronts." —Tom Reynolds |
