Genetics:
Protein Reverses Chromatin Engineering
Biological Chemistry:
Molecule Implicated in Transcription Termination
Structural Biology:
DNA Splicing Enzyme Observed in Action
Scientific Symposium:
Fashions Change in Modeling Disease
Chronic Periodontitis Differs at the Microbial Level in Populations Worldwide
Brain Structure for Reward and Punishment Smaller in Cocaine Addicts
Brigham Celebrates 50th Anniversary of First Human Organ Transplant
Beth Israel Assumes Academic Oversight of Mass. Mental Health Faculty
Joslin Names Conley Chairman of the Board
Academic Officer Tapped for HMI Dubai Project
Macklis Receives Javits Neuroscience Investigator Award
Global Citizen Award Goes to Bill Moyers
HMS Family Health Guide Published in Paperback
New Appointments to Full Professor
Honors and Advances
Community Celebrates a Child's First Laugh
Brigham Celebrates 50th Anniversary of First Human Organ Transplant
The 50th anniversary of the first successful human organ transplant will be marked Dec. 23 at Brigham and Women's Hospital. In 1954, surgeons at Peter Bent Brigham Hospital, led by Joseph Murray, HMS professor emeritus of surgery at BWH, performed a kidney transplant between identical twins (pictured at right). Murray later went on to share a Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1990 with E. Donnall Thomas of Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center for their discoveries concerning organ and cell transplantation in the treatment of human disease. At BWH, where more than 2,700 organ transplants have been performed since that milestone, two symposiums were held to commemorate the feat, examining the history of transplantation, perspectives of patients and donors, and progress made affecting the future of transplantation. An exhibit at the main entrance of Brigham and Women's (15 Francis St.), including the Nobel Prize in Medicine, celebrates this event.
Michael Zinner, chief of surgery at BWH and the Mosley professor of surgery at HMS, said, "The first transplant was remarkable not only for the medical breakthrough, but also for the courage and steadfastness of the surgical team and hospital leadership who supported transplantation in the face of the medical community's skepticism at the time. The first transplant ushered in a whole new era, when surgery went beyond treating acute illness to restore the health of patients with end-stage organ disease." (Photo courtesy of Brigham and Women's Hospital)
Beth Israel Deaconess Assumes Academic Oversight of Mass. Mental Health Faculty
Massachusetts Mental Health Center's Department of Mental Health, HMS, and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center have announced a new clinical, educational, and research affiliation. HMS's longstanding academic affiliation with MMHC and clinical oversight of the state-operated center will now be managed through BID's Department of Psychiatry. The department will assume responsibility for academic oversight of HMS faculty at the center, overseeing their clinical, educational, and research activities. "We believe that this affiliation will strengthen the activities of the HMS faculty and provide added support for the important mission of the MMHC," said Raphael Dolin, dean for academic and clinical programs at HMS. A year ago, MMHC moved its clinical practice to the Lemuel Shattuck Hospital in preparation for its facility at 74 Fenwood Road to be redeveloped. The academic offices for MMHC were transferred to the Landmark Center. A new facility on the Fenwood Road site is expected to be completed in about five years.
Joslin Names Conley Chairman of the Board
Kevin Conley, president and CEO of Conley & Company, has been named chairman of Joslin Diabetes Center's board of trustees. Conley succeeds Robert Patterson, senior partner of Cabot Properties, L.P., and chairman of Cabot's Investment Committee, who stepped down after nine years as chairman, but will continue to serve as a trustee and chairman emeritus.Conley joined Joslin's board in 2001. Conley & Company, an executive recruitment firm, announced in 2002 that it would donate 25 percent of its net income to diabetes research.
Academic Officer Tapped For HMI Dubai Project
Robert Thurer, HMS associate professor of surgery at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, has been appointed chief academic officer of the Harvard Medical International and Dubai Healthcare City project in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Thurer will be responsible for the implementation and oversight of all academic activities within Dubai Healthcare City and will head the Harvard Medical School Dubai Center Institute for Postgraduate Education and Research, which was launched earlier this year. He will also lead the development, implementation, and management of postgraduate and continuing medical education programs in Dubai. "As a graduate and longstanding member of the faculty at Harvard, Robert will serve as an important link between Harvard and the education professionals in Dubai," said Robert Crone, dean for international programs at HMS and president and CEO of HMI.
Macklis Receives Javits Neuroscience Investigator Award
The National Institutes of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) announced that Jeffrey Macklis, HMS associate professor of neurology at Massachusetts General Hospital, is one of eight investigators to win a Senator Jacob Javits Award in the Neurosciences. Macklis will receive seven years of funding from NINDS, a branch of the National Institutes of Health.Macklis has made significant contributions to the understanding of neuronal placement and cellular repair of the brain following injury. His research shows that contrary to previously held beliefs, the reconstruction of complex networks in the brain's cerebral cortex can be achieved in adulthood. His findings may point the way toward development of cell replacement therapies for treating brain disorders and spinal cord injuries.
The $2.8 million award, created in 1983, honors the late U.S. Senator Jacob Javits, who suffered from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and was an advocate for research on neurological disorders.
Global Citizen Award Goes to Bill Moyers
The HMS Center for Health and the Global Environment has given its annual Global Citizen Award to journalist Bill Moyers. Before retiring in November, Moyers hosted and produced the weekly PBS series NOW with Bill Moyers. Since its launch in 2002, NOW produced nearly three dozen stories on topics such as global warming, destruction of wetlands, wind power, genetically modified food, mountaintop mining, and the weakening of the clean air and water acts.
"Moyers has been instrumental in highlighting how changes in the environment affect our health and our daily lives," said award ceremony host and Center for Health and the Global Environment board member Meryl Streep.
Eric Chivian, director of the center and HMS assistant clinical professor of psychiatry (social medicine), said that Moyers's work on the environment makes connections between human health and the well-being of the Earth's ecosystems.
HMS Family Health Guide Published in Paperback
The Harvard Medical School Family Health Guide, the first book of its kind written by doctors for patients, will issue a paperback edition on Jan. 3, 2005. The guide, authored by HMS faculty, features updates including sections on cardiology and women's health, both reflecting the latest advances in prevention and treatment. Consumer-oriented sections help readers make the most of their managed care, providing symptom charts, drug interaction charts, suggested questions to ask doctors, home remedies, and first-aid and emergency advice. The book was edited by Anthony Komaroff, HMS professor of medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital and editor in chief of Harvard Health Publications.
New Appointments to Full Professor
These faculty members were appointed to a full professorship in September.
Michael Shannon
Professor of Pediatrics
Children's Hospital Boston
Shannon is division chief and chair of emergency medicine at Children's and director of the division's Center for Biopreparedness. His clinical and research interests are in emergency preparedness, with an emphasis on outbreak detection, pediatric emergency response, medical toxicology, and pediatric environmental health, particularly the epidemiology and management of childhood lead poisoning. Shannon is the first African American to be appointed a professor of pediatrics at HMS.
Frank Sacks
Professor of Medicine
Brigham and Women's Hospital
Sacks is also a professor of cardiovascular disease prevention in the Department of Nutrition at HSPH. He studies nutrition, cholesterol disorders, hypertension, and cardiovascular disease. He conducts laboratory research in human lipoprotein metabolism, lipoproteins, and cardiovascular disease, and clinical trials in nutrition, cardiovascular disease, and obesity. Sacks has a specialty clinic in hyperlipidemia at BWH within the cardiovascular division.
Thomas Michel
Professor of Medicine
Brigham and Women's Hospital and Boston VA Medical Center
Michel is chief of cardiology at the Boston Veterans Affairs Health Care System and a cardiologist at BWH. His lab has explored several novel pathways of cardiovascular signal transduction. He and his colleagues have made important contributions to elucidating the molecular mechanisms that control the nitric oxide synthases, a family of enzymes that modulate blood pressure and platelet aggregation, as well as firefly flashing. He also has been a proponent of student research and serves as chair of the HMS Student Research Committee, as a scholar of the HMS Academy, and as a member of the board of tutors in biochemical sciences at the University.
Walter Fontana
Professor of Systems Biology
Harvard Medical School
Fontana's theory group is interested in the how and why of mechanisms that promote and constrain the evolution of the genotype-phenotype relation and underlie phenomena such as phenotypic plasticity, robustness of type, and aging. Simultaneously, he is investigating formal languages for reasoning about the biological mechanisms that have or could have evolved to process information in molecular systems, which he hopes to bring to bear on the research above. Fontana is a member of the external faculty of the Santa Fe Institute and a faculty associate of the Program for Evolutionary Dynamics at Harvard University.
Ary Goldberger
Professor of Medicine
Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center
Goldberger is director of the Margret and H.A. Rey Institute for Nonlinear Dynamics in Physiology and Medicine at BID and program director of the multicenter NIH Research Resource for Complex Physiologic Signals (PhysioNet). His group's research activities focus on the emerging applications of complex systems theory and nonlinear mechanisms to both basic physiologic control and bedside medicine. His teaching and clinical activities center on electrocardiography.
Nader Rifai
Professor of Pathology
Children's Hospital Boston
Rifai is also director of the clinical chemistry laboratory at Children's. His research focuses on the development and the evaluation of assays for biochemical markers of coronary disease and myocardial injury. More recently, he has concentrated on the role of inflammatory biomarkers in vascular injury and has built a unique research laboratory that is designed to bring newly developed assays for esoteric biomarkers into clinical trials and epidemiological studies. The work generated from this laboratory has changed the practice of cardiology and has provided new insights into the biology of vascular injury.
Honors and Advances
Robert Ackerman, HMS associate professor of radiology at Massachusetts General Hospital, has received the C. Miller Fisher, MD award from the American Stroke Association (ASA), a division of the American Heart Association. The award is the highest ASA honor presented to a member of the greater Boston medical community. It is named for C. Miller Fisher, professor emeritus of neurology at HMS. Ackerman is also the director emeritus of the MGH Neurovascular Laboratory and the chair of the Boston Stroke Society. His research interests include work on neurovascular diagnosis and the measurement of brain circulation in stroke-prone and acute-stroke patients.The American Psychiatric Association has given the 2004 Alexandra Symonds Award to Malkah Notman, HMS clinical professor of psychiatry at Cambridge Hospital. The Symonds Award is given annually to a female psychiatrist who has made outstanding contributions to women's health and the advancement of women. It was established in memory of Alexandra Symonds, a leader in promoting gender equity and founder of the Association of Women Psychiatrists.
Nancy Mello, HMS professor of psychology (neuroscience) in the Department of Psychiatry at McLean Hospital, received the Marian W. Fischman Memorial Lectureship Award during the annual meeting of the College on Problems of Drug Dependence. Mello is also codirector of McLean's Alcohol and Drug Abuse Research Center and director of the Behavioral Science Laboratory. She was cited for her clinical laboratory studies of cocaine abuse.
The Endocrine Society has given its highest honor, the Fred Conrad Koch Award, to Patricia Donahoe, the Marshall K. Bartlett professor of surgery at HMS and Massachusetts General Hospital. Donahoe is cited for her contributions to endocrinology in her pursuit of the biology of mullerian-inhibiting substance. She is the director of the Pediatric Surgical Research Laboratories and chief emeritus of Pediatric Surgical Services, both at MGH.
Bruce Spiegelman, HMS professor of cell biology at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, has received a second consecutive Method to Extend Research in Time (MERIT) award from the National Institutes of Health for his studies on cell development. The award provides 10 more years of research funding for Spiegelman's lab, whose current MERIT grant was due to expire this year.
Howard Koh, professor of health policy and management and associate dean for public health practice at HSPH, has been appointed to a three-year term on the Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts Foundation's board of directors. Koh, also director of the HSPH Center for Public Health Preparedness, was the commissioner of the Department of Public Health for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts from 1997 to 2003. Since its inception in 2001, the foundation has worked to institute policy initiatives to expand health care for uninsured and low-income families in Massachusetts.
Lucian Leape, adjunct professor of health policy in the Department of Health Policy and Management at HSPH, has received an award for his work on patient safety from the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations and the National Quality Forum. Leape was commended for his fundamental conceptual contributions to contemporary understanding of the nature of medical errors and the extent of the patient safety problem and for his efforts to improve the safety of care for all patients.
Ronald Kahn, president and director of Joslin Diabetes Center, has been awarded the 2004 Claude Bernard Medal by the European Association for the Study of Diabetes at the organization's 40th annual meeting in Munich. The award recognizes innovative leadership and superior contributions in the field of diabetes research and is the highest scientific honor awarded by the association. In recognition of the award, Kahn, the Mary K. Iacocca professor of medicine at HMS, presented the distinguished Claude Bernard Lecture at the association meeting.
The Will Solimene Award for Excellence in Medical Communication from the American Medical Writers Association has been given to Nicholas Tilney, the Francis D. Moore professor of surgery at HMS and Brigham and Women's Hospital. The award was given in honor of Tilney's book, Transplant: From Myth to Reality, which traces the history of transplantation.
Dan Milner, clinical fellow in pathology at HMS and Brigham and Women's Hospital, received the 2004 College of American Pathologists Foundation Humanitarian Grant Award. This year, Milner will travel to Malawi, a southern African country challenged by HIV, AIDS, malaria, and other global health issues. His award will support efforts to bring improved patient care, teaching, and research to the community.