OB/GYN: Risk Factors Found for Depression Prior to Menopause Social Medicine: Sharp Rise in Disordered Eating in Fiji Follows Arrival of Western TV Clinical Trials: Gene Therapy for Hemophilia Tested Minority Health Policy: Alums to Broaden Access to Care Ethics: Programs Address Ethics in International Research Books: Summer Reading Type of Oncogene-Caused Leukemia Linked to Progenitor Cell Type P53 May Induce Death in Cells with Short Telomeres Certain Dietary Fat May Protect Against Heart Attacks New Channel Suggested in Pheromone Signaling Framework Developed for Diagnosing Coronary Artery Disease Martinos Gift Creates New Imaging Center in HST Appointments to Full and Endowed Professorships In Memoriam: Thomas Sandson Honors and Advances Getting in Touch with the Human Side of Illness Front Page

BULLETIN Martinos Gift Creates New Imaging Center in HST A $20 million gift from a Greek couple will create a new center dedicated to biomedical imaging within the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology (HST).     Dean Joseph Martin and MIT President Charles Vest announced May 19 that the gift from Thanassis and Marina Martinos of Athens will establish the Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Functional and Structural Biomedical Imaging, named for the couple's late daughter.     "It is a great privilege to support the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology in this ambitious effort. Our goal is to make a meaningful contribution that will advance our understanding and treatment of disease," Thanassis Martinos said. The Martinoses' connection to HST goes back more than 20 years, to when their godchild was successfully treated at Massachusetts General Hospital largely due to the efforts of Daniel Shannon, HMS professor of pediatrics and a founding member of HST.     When the Martinoses' oldest daughter, Athinoula, died in 1997 at the age of 24, they established the Athinoula A. Martinos Research Scholarship Fund to support the research, study, and training of HST students.     The current imaging research at HST that will be advanced by the new center includes NMR brain imaging, which helps physicians determine how best to save portions of the brain at high risk of damage from stroke or disease, and image-guided surgery, which provides a detailed picture of the brain superimposed on the actual skull of the patient.     "The Martinos Imaging Center will be an important physical representation of HST's commitment to the solution of biomedical problems and improvement of human health by advancing imaging technologies that by their very nature integrate scientific and medical disciplines," said Joseph Bonventre, co-director of HST. "We applaud the members of the Martinos family for their vision of the future of research at the interface of science, technology, and medicine."   The Maria Lorenz Pope Fellowship Fund has been established by Alfred Pope, HMS professor emeritus of neuropathology at McLean Hospital, to honor the memory of his wife. The postdoctoral fellowship will be given to a junior physician engaged in mental health research at McLean. Maria Lorenz Pope was for many years an HMS associate clinical professor of psychiatry at McLean, where in 1946 she became the first woman on the professional staff. Alfred Pope is pictured (right) with Daniel Federman, dean for medical education. Appointments to Full and Endowed Professorships These faculty members were appointed to a full professorship in April. James Beck Professor of Psychiatry Cambridge Hospital Beck's research interest is people with severe, persistent mental disorders. Specifically, he studies their insight or understanding of what is wrong with them and what is useful to do about it. He also studies the relationship between violence and mental disorder and the evolving law relating to the therapist's duty to protect third parties endangered by their patients. Charles Berde Professor of Anesthesia (Pediatrics) Children's Hospital Berde is director of the Pain Treatment Service at Children's Hospital. His clinical interest is the treatment of children with pain that is acute, chronic, or caused by cancer. His clinical research involves pediatric analgesic pharmacology and outcomes of pain treatment. His laboratory research studies local anesthetic mechanisms and biological consequences of prolonged nerve blockade, and the development and preclinical testing of new sustained-release long-duration local anesthetics. Louis Caplan Professor of Neurology Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center Caplan is a former department chair at the New England Medical Center. His major clinical and research interest is stroke. He has written widely about stroke registries and data banks and on stroke diagnosis and treatment. Nishan Goudsouzian Professor of Anesthesia Massachusetts General Hospital Goudsouzian is director of pediatric anesthesia at Massachusetts General Hospital. He is also the organizer of the weekly grand rounds in the Department of Anesthesia and Critical Care at MGH. His research interest is neuromuscular blocking agents. He has been involved in the development and evaluation of muscle relaxants in infants and children for the last 30 years. Peter Mauch Professor of Radiation Oncology Joint Center for Radiation Therapy As associate chief of the Department of Radiation Oncology, Mauch performs research on the treatment and long-term outcome of patients with early stage Hodgkin's disease and non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. In the laboratory, he studies the effects of cytotoxic agents and cytokines on hematopoietic stem cells. He is currently chair of the outcomes research committee of the American Society for Therapeutic Radiation and Oncology. Stephen Soumerai Professor of Ambulatory Care and Prevention Harvard Medical School and Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Soumerai directs the Drug Policy Research Program, focused on pharmaceutical use and the quality and outcomes of health care. He also cochairs the statistics and evaluative sciences concentration of the Harvard University-wide PhD program in health policy. His principal research interests include methods for improving the quality of clinical decision-making, and the effects of prescription drug coverage and cost containment policies on clinical outcomes among vulnerable populations. This full professor was appointed to an endowed chair. Spyridon Artavanis-Tsakonas The Kurt J. Isselbacher/Peter D. Schwartz Professor of Oncology in the Department of Cell Biology Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center Artavanis-Tsakonas is director of the Program in Developmental Biology and Cancer at Massachusetts General Hospital. Previously, he was a professor of cell biology, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator in the Department of Cell Biology, and director of the Division of Biological Sciences at Yale University. His research focuses on the molecular biology and genetics of intercellular communication during development. He also has an interest in exploring how paradigms derived from the study of model organisms such as Drosophila apply to human biology and pathology. In Memoriam Thomas Sandson, assistant professor of neurology at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, died of lymphoma on April 1. He was 36. Born in New York City, he graduated from Brown University School of Medicine. Sandson was the director of the Memory Disorders Clinic, director of education for the Behavioral Neurology Unit, and senior associate in neurology at BID. His research focused on novel MRI techniques in Alzheimer's disease and clinical pharmacology and trials in Alzheimer's, AIDS dementia complex, and peripheral neuropathy associated with AIDS. He also studied neuropsychological measures and medication response in adults with right-hemisphere learning disability and attention deficit disorder. Sandson received the Alzheimer's Association Faculty Scholar Award and the Brigham and Women's Hospital Neurology Teaching Award. He is survived by his wife, Mei See (Law); a daughter, Katherine; his mother, Hannah (Ney) Sandson of Weston; and a sister, Jennifer Sandson Frank of Mountainbrook, Ala. Honors and Advances The W.K. Kellogg Foundation has chosen Ugonna Iroku, HMS '01; Rey Ramos, HMS '01; and Ann Schutt-Aine, HMS '00, to receive its 1999 Community Based Training Fellowship for Minority Medical Students. Nationally, 15 second- and third-year medical students were chosen to receive the $10,000 fellowships. Alfredo Quiñones-Hinojosa, HMS '99, has been selected as the 1999 Ralph W. Ellison Scholar by National Medical Fellowships, Inc. The annual $500 prize, named in honor of the author of The Invisible Man, which deals with race discrimination in America, is given to one senior minority medical student for outstanding academic performance, leadership, and social responsibility. Bristol-Myers Squibb Company and National Medical Fellowships, Inc. have announced that Roy Hamilton, HMS '00; Walter Lech, HMS '00; and Fidencio Saldaña, HMS '00, were named as 1999 Academic Medicine Fellows. Twenty-six students nationwide were chosen to receive the $6,000 award. Recipients will perform their fellowship during an eight- to 12-week period before the end of the upcoming year. The first Leslie W. Nesmith Award for excellence in basic science or clinical research pertaining to diseases and surgery of the retina and vitreous has been awarded to Ming Lu, HMS '99. He received the $3,000 first place prize for his paper "Vascular Endothelial Growth Factor Gene Regulation and Action in Diabetic Retinopathy," which he will deliver June 10 at the annual meeting of the Schepens International Society, the sponsor of the award. Lu is a research fellow at Children's Hospital and Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary. The American Society for Microbiology (ASM) announced that John Young, associate professor of microbiology and molecular genetics, has been chosen to receive its oldest award, the Eli Lilly and Company Research Award. The $5,000 prize recognizes fundamental research in microbiology and immunology of great merit achieved at the beginning of a researcher's career. Young is being honored for his paper "ALV Receptors: Their Roles in Retroviral Entry, Pathogenesis, and in the Development of Virus-Based Gene Delivery Systems," which he will present at the ASM general meeting in June. Back to Top