Clinical Research: Harvard Launches Clinical Research Institute Neuroscience: Teaching an Old Dogma New Tricks Diabetes Research: New Source of Insulin-producing Cells Found Epidemiology: Heartening News About Coronary Heart Disease Prevention Common Antibiotic May Slow Huntington's Disease Specialized Neurons Team Up to Spot Foreground, Motion Potential Tumor Vaccine Targets More Plentiful than Believed Cholesterol Med Shown to Reduce Bone Fractures New Full Professorships HMS First-Year Teaching Awards Honors and Advances In Memoriam: Irvin Blank Jonathan Freeman Seymour Kety Alexander Nadas An Afternoon in the Lab Sparks Young Scientist Front Page

New Full Professorships These Medical School faculty members were appointed to a full professorship in May. Norma Gerard Professor of Medicine Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center Gerard is a cell and molecular biologist in the Pulmonary Division at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. Her research interests include understanding the immunological functions of neurokinins in development and host defense. A second and overlapping interest is in the molecular mechanisms by which leukocytes traffic in inflammatory responses. Richard Scott Professor of Orthopedic Surgery Brigham and Women's Hospital Scott is chief of the implant service at Brigham and Women's Hospital as well as chief of the Joint Arthroplasty Fellowship Program. He is past president of the Knee Society and his major clinical and research activities involve joint replacement surgery of the hip and knee as well as juvenile rheumatoid arthritis. Robert Shamberger Professor of Surgery Children's Hospital Shamberger is director of the Surgery Residency Program at Children's Hospital and chair of the surgical section of the Pediatric Oncology Group. His research interests focus on clinical outcomes in oncology, inflammatory bowel disease, and chest wall deformities. He is active in the development and analysis of protocols of two national collaborative pediatric oncology groups, the National Wilms Tumor Study Group and the Pediatric Oncology Group. I. David Todres Professor of Pediatrics (Anesthesia) Massachusetts General Hospital Todres is a pediatric intensivist and a pioneer in the development of pediatric critical care in this country. His major research interests are in psychosocial and ethical issues related to critical illness in children. He is chief of the Medical Ethics Unit for Massachusetts General Hospital for Children. Todres is medical coordinator of the comprehensive exam for final year students at HMS. These Medical School faculty members were appointed to a full professorship in June. Francis Delmonico Clinical Professor of Surgery Massachusetts General Hospital Delmonico is director of renal transplantation at Massachusetts General Hospital and medical director of the New England Organ Bank. He is a transplant surgeon and clinician. His recent academic interests center on the suitable organ donor and ethical issues confronting the transplant community. Gian-Paolo Dotto Professor of Dermatology Massachusetts General Hospital Dotto's main research contributions have been in the field of signal transduction and cell cycle regulatory mechanisms underlying the switch between epithelial cell growth and differentiation. In particular, his lab has discovered the essential role that tyrosine kinase activation plays in control of keratinocyte differentiation, and the surprisingly complex functions that the cyclin/CDK inhibitor p21(WAF1/Cip1) plays in this process. Daniel Singer Professor of Medicine Massachusetts General Hospital Singer is director of the clinical epidemiology unit in the General Medicine Division at Massachusetts General Hospital. His research addresses problems in preventive medicine and clinical efficiency. Content areas include diabetes mellitus, community-acquired pneumonia, lumbar spine disorders, and atrial fibrillation. In particular, Singer's work has helped establish that oral anticoagulants prevent stroke in atrial fibrillation and helped define the optimal intensity of anticoagulation in this condition. Michael Yaremchuk Clinical Professor of Surgery Massachusetts General Hospital Yaremchuk is a plastic surgeon and director of craniofacial surgery at Massachusetts General Hospital. His clinical practice focus is surgery of the face and facial skeleton. His research relates to surgical manipulation of the facial skeleton and the engineering of cartilage. HMS First-Year Teaching Awards The following awards were presented by the HMS Class of 2003 on June 7. Best Course Integrated Human Physiology, Bruce Zetter, the Charles Nowiszewski professor of cancer biology at Children's Hospital Best CAMEL (Printed course guide) Pharmacology, David Golan, associate professor of medicine Best Course Director Bruce Zetter, the Charles Nowiszewski professor of cancer biology at Children's Hospital Best Lecturer Clifford Tabin, professor of genetics Best Guest Lecturer Hidde Ploegh, the Edward Mallinck-rodt Jr. professor of immunopathology Best Tutor Thomas McGarry, instructor in cell biology Best Lab Instructor Cynthia McDermott, lecturer on biological chemistry and molecular pharmacology Best TA/Conference Leader Edmund Griffin, research assistant in neurobiology Best Patient–Doctor Preceptor Beverly Woo, assistant professor of medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital Best Social Medicine or Epidemiology Instructor Allan Brandt, the Amalie Moses Kass professor of the history of medicine Lifetime Achievement Award James Faix, assistant professor of pathology at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center HMS dean Joseph Martin hosted a reception on June 12 to celebrate the establishment of the Victor J. Aresty professorship in medicine at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. The chair, named in memory of the former executive of several Boston shoe firms, is funded through donations made by his widow Pola Aresty (right) and their sons Jeffrey and Neil. At the reception were his brothers Julian Aroesty (left), a cardiologist at Beth Israel Deaconess, and Joseph Aresty (center). Photo by Liza Green Honors and Advances Seven students from Harvard have been named Schweitzer fellows for the upcoming 2000–2001 academic year. HMS students Nazleen Bharmal, Jamal Harris, Renee Hsia, Daniel Smith, and Sierra Washington, and HSPH students Ellie Feinglass and Carey Johnson will design and participate in health-related community service projects to aid communities that lack adequate health services. The fellows receive a $2,000 stipend at the end of their fellowship. The New England Journal of Medicine announced that Jeffrey Drazen, the Parker B. Francis professor of medicine at HMS and the chief of pulmonary medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital, is the journal's new editor in chief. Ming Tsuang, the Stanley Cobb professor of psychiatry and head of the Department of Psychiatry at the Massachusetts Mental Health Center, received the Gold Medal Award 2000 at the Society of Biological Psychiatry annual meeting in May. The award honors pioneering contributions that advance and extend knowledge in the field of biological psychiatry. In May, Judah Folkman, the Julia Dyckman Andrus professor of pediatric surgery at Children's Hospital, received the Carl W. Gottschalk Award from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, for outstanding contributions to physiology and pathophysiology. He also was honored by the American Physiological Society with its most prestigious award, the Walter B. Cannon Lecture Award. Folkman presented lectures at both events. The former Building D on the Quad was recently renamed the Giovanni Auletta Armenise Medical Research Building in honor of the generous support that Count Armenise of Rome has shown HMS in recent years. The formal dedication ceremony took place on June 17 prior to a dinner celebration on the Quad. In June 1999, Armenise was one of five people honored as Distinguished Benefactors to the Medical School's seven-year capital campaign. His involvement with HMS began in 1994 when he brought his dying wife to Massachusetts General Hospital. Realizing that current therapies could not halt her cancer, he and his wife resolved to establish a foundation that would support research basic to medicine and agriculture. In 1996 the Giovanni Armenise–Harvard Foundation was created, and it has established four Armenise Centers at HMS for Structural Biology, Neurobiology, Cell Signal Transduction, and Human Cancer Viruses. Above, Armenise (left) is greeted by Daniel Tosteson, the Caroline Shields Walker distinguished professor of cell biology and former dean of HMS. Note that coverage of the Giovanni Armenise–Harvard Foundation symposium, held June 19 and 20, will appear in the next issue of Focus, August 11. Photo by Lou Goodman In Memoriam Irvin Blank, retired HMS assistant professor of dermatology at Massachusetts General Hospital and considered by many to be the father of skin moisturizers, died April 19 at the age of 98. In a research career spanning more than 75 years (62 of them at MGH and HMS), Blank made major contributions to the understanding of the properties of skin and helped to explain the mechanisms of action of many skin medications and cosmetics. Blank received his PhD in Bacteriology and Mycology from the University of Cincinnati and in 1936 came to HMS as a research fellow in dermatology. In 1938 he joined the Dermatology Service at Massachusetts General Hospital. After retiring from the HMS faculty as an assistant professor of dermatology in 1968, he continued to work as an associate biochemist in dermatology at MGH for the next 30 years. He continued his teaching and research activities at MGH well into his 95th year and remained active as a consultant until recently. His research in the 1950s on the effect of water and oil on the skin led to the conclusion that water softens the outside layer of the skin better than oil. Moisturizers were developed as a result of this observation. Blank was a founding member of the Dermatology Foundation and the Society for Investigative Dermatology, where he served on the board and as vice president and president. It was in 1959, when the Society of Cosmetic Chemists presented him with a Special Award, that he was described as "the father of moisturizers." Blank was a life member of the American Academy of Dermatology, the New York Academy of Sciences, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He was predeceased by his wife of 58 years, Anna, in 1994. He is survived by two daughters, Joani Blank of Oakland, Calif., and Barbara Hauser of Brookline; three grandchildren, including Joshua Hauser, HMS '95; and two great-grandchildren. Jonathan Freeman, HMS assistant professor of medicine and HSPH lecturer on epidemiology, died May 23 at the age of 60. Freeman received his MD from Duke and his ScD from HSPH. He joined the faculty of HMS in 1972 and HSPH in 1990. His research at HSPH focused on infections occurring in hospitalized patients, and he was dedicated to enhancing the program in infectious disease epidemiology. In recent years, he led the interdisciplinary program in infectious disease. While he had a passion for public health, Freeman always valued the importance and rewards of practicing medicine. He continued to treat infectious disease patients at the VA Medical Center in West Roxbury. He is survived by his wife, Elsie of Newton; a son, Noah; and a daughter, Esther. Seymour Kety, HMS emeritus professor of neuroscience and senior psychobiologist at McLean Hospital who received the 1999 Lasker award for a lifetime of contributions to neuroscience, died May 25. He was 84. A visionary and innovator, he is widely recognized as the father of psychiatric neuroscience. "Seymour Kety is one of the true giants of all time in neuroscience," said Joseph Martin, HMS dean, when Kety received the Lasker. Kety first established his reputation in the 1940s and early 1950s when he developed methods permitting identification of blood flow in various regions of the brain during states of health and neuropsychiatric disorder. These groundbreaking investigations gave rise to the field of brain imaging technology. In 1951, Kety became the first scientific director of the National Institute of Mental Health at the NIH. He established a broad program of fundamental research representing all disciplines concerned with the brain and behavior. That program nurtured one Nobel Prize-winning scientist and four Lasker recipients. Later, his landmark studies on the genetic basis of schizophrenia established unequivocally that the disease has biological origins, at a time when it was thought to be a result of bad parenting. Kety came to Harvard Medical School in 1967 and joined the Mailman Research Center at McLean Hospital in the late 1970s, where he continued to work one day a week until earlier this year. Kety is survived by his wife, Josephine; a son, Lawrence; a daughter, Roberta; and two grandchildren, Robert and Lauren Kety. Alexander S. Nadas, HMS professor emeritus of pediatrics, founder and chairman emeritus of the Department of Cardiology at Children's Hospital, and known to his colleagues as the father of pediatric cardiology, died at his home on May 15 at the age of 86. Born in Budapest, Hungary, Nadas received his MD from the University of Budapest. He emigrated to the U.S. in 1938, after studying in London, and trained in New York, Cleveland, Boston, and Detroit. His association with HMS and Children's Hospital began in 1942, when he was an assistant resident. He served as cardiologist in chief at Children's Hospital for 33 years until his retirement in 1982. Under his leadership, the Department of Cardiology at the hospital became an international center of excellence for the care of children with heart disease. During the 1950s, Nadas spent much time exploring the use of electrocardiography and set up the first cardiac catheterization laboratory at Children's. He published Pediatric Cardiology, the first textbook on the subject, in 1957. In 1989 HMS established the Alexander S. Nadas Professorship in Pediatric Cardiology at Children's. During his career, Nadas received a Guggenheim fellowship, a Fulbright professorship, the Gifted Teacher Award from the American College of Cardiology, the Edgar Mannheimer Memorial Lecture Award from the European Association of Pediatric Cardiologists, and the Paul Dudley White Award from the American Heart Association, among his many honors. Nadas was predeceased by his wife of 53 years, Elizabeth McClearen, who died in 1994. He is survived by two daughters, Trudi Murch of Phoenix, Ariz., and Betsy Seamans of Pittsburgh, Pa.; a son, John of Wellesley; and three grandchildren.