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FACULTY SYMPOSIUM
At the NRB, Faculty View Convergence of Biology and MedicineThe new research building was the star of this year's Faculty Symposium, held on June 10. Four faculty members working in the modern space gave alumni a taste of their latest research efforts on cardiovascular and neurodegenerative diseases. The talks highlighted the attractions of the NRB as an incubator for interdisciplinary research linking basic biology and medicine.
Michael Gimbrone, the Elsie T. Friedman professor of pathology at HMS and Brigham and Women's, praised the new research building for its interdisciplinary environment. (Photo by Graham Ramsay) The day's first speaker, Michael Gimbrone, displayed a photo of his sunny, wide-open lab space and pronounced the NRB a "wonderful place to conduct science." The Elsie T. Friedman professor of pathology at HMS and Brigham and Women's Hosptial, Gimbrone praised the building for providing a "new intellectual environment, where interactions are bound by interest, not by department." Gimbrone, head of the Department of Pathology at BWH, went on to describe his research into the effects of complex blood flow patterns on the endothelial cells that line blood vessels. Early atherosclerotic lesions tend to occur near areas of disturbed blood flow, such as branch points and sharp curves in blood vessels. By collaborating with engineers, he and his colleagues developed a machine that mimics the flow pattern in any part of the human vasculature on a dish of cultured endothelial cells. Through this approach, the researchers have defined changes in gene activity in endothelial cells under smooth or disturbed flow conditions. This information, made freely available over the internet, is leading to new understanding of early atherosclerosis. Peter Libby, the Mallinckrodt professor of medicine at HMS, and Gimbrone's longtime neighbor and collaborator, continued the theme of endothelial cell responses in his talk about the role of inflammation in atherosclerosis. Involving rabbits, mice, and eventually humans, Libby's research demonstrated that vessel disease is not just a gradual filling of the body's plumbing with cholesterol-laden sludge, but it arises from immune cell activation inside the vessel wall. Therapy for cardiovascular disease will increasingly involve treatment of the underlying inflammatory process rather than focusing solely on unblocking narrowed vessels, he said. In an inventive bridging of biology and medicine, Mel Feany, HMS assistant professor of pathology at BWH, is using the fruit fly Drosophila to study human neurodegenerative disease. Feany engineered flies to express a human protein implicated in Parkinson's disease, the second most common neurodegenerative disorder after Alzheimer's. The flies experience an age-dependent loss of neurons similar to human Parkinson's patients and even develop measurable changes in their ability to get around as a result of the neuron loss. By genetic analysis, Feany identified two genes that block the neuron loss and may give clues to possible therapeutic targets. And since the flies "get" Parkinson's, they might be "cured" with new drugs. Feany is collaborating with other researchers to test drug candidates on the ailing flies. From neurological disease in flies, the topic turned to heart disease in fish. Physician Christine Seidman, HMS professor of medicine and of genetics, has spent years chasing down genes responsible for congestive heart failure in humans. To pinpoint the function of one such gene, Seidman turned to zebrafish, whose tiny transparent bodies give researchers an inside look at organ development. When the fish were engineered with a mutation similar to that found in humans, they developed abnormal hearts. Seidman plans to continue studying the fish to understand the functional consequences of other genes in congestive heart failure, which affects half a million people in the United States. It is not by accident that basic scientists and clinical researchers are set side by side in the NRB, according to moderator Daniel Federman, senior dean for alumni relations and clinical teaching at HMS. "The hope for the translation between biology and medicine--that's what the building is built for," Federman told the crowd. --Pat McCaffrey |
