Project to Find Autism Gene

The Autism Consortium, a collaboration of 11 Boston-area scientific and clinical institutions, is launching the Autism Gene Discovery Project, the first comprehensive genetic association study to examine the entire human genome as it relates to autism. The project will use new genetic analysis technology to examine samples from autistic children, which the consortium hopes will lead to the discovery of the molecular mechanisms and pathways of the disease. Rudy Tanzi, HMS professor of neurology at Massachusetts General Hospital; Christopher A. Walsh, the Bullard professor of neurology at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center; Mark Daly, HMS assistant professor of medicine at MGH; and James Gusella, the Bullard professor of neurogenetics in the Department of Genetics at MGH, are among the researchers on the project. The Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT will perform the genotyping.

Center Established for Translational Cancer Research

Researchers from the Dana–Farber Cancer Institute and HMS have created the Center for Applied Cancer Science, which will focus on translational cancer research. The center, directed by Ronald DePinho, HMS professor of medicine (genetics) at DFCI, includes a collection of researchers, technicians, and laboratory and clinical facilities. It is made up of three components: a science discovery program, consisting of researchers investigating the genes involved in cancer and how they function in fully formed tumors; a pipeline program, in which researchers will screen monoclonal antibodies as the basis of new therapies; and a business development program to manage drug-development projects. “The traditional system is too compartmentalized,” said DePinho. “We need an integrated effort that combines discovery science and its rich feature of producing unanticipated results, and applied, directed activities that drive the translation of laboratory findings into actual drugs."

Sixth Annual Hollis L. Albright, M.D. ’31 Symposium

Please join us for the Sixth Annual
Hollis L. Albright, M.D. ’31 Symposium
Moderated by Daniel D. Federman, M.D. ’53
Highlighting
What’s New at Harvard Medical School
Presented by Joseph B. Martin, M.D., Ph.D.
And exploring
Advances: Cancer and Nanotechnology
With Judah Folkman, M.D. ’57 and Robert Langer, PhD
Thursday, October 5, 2006
5:00 to 7:00 p.m. (Doors open at 4:30 p.m.)
Harvard Medical School
NRB Amphitheater
77 Avenue Louis Pasteur
Space is limited; reservations are required.
To RSVP or for more information,
please call 617-384-8469
or e-mail caitlin_brennan@hms.harvard.edu.
CME credit available

CBR Institute Will Have New Home

The CBR Institute has leased laboratory space in the Center for Life Science Boston building under construction in the Longwood Medical Area. CBRI will occupy 50,000 square feet on one floor of the new building, located on Blackfan Circle, beginning in July 2008. The institute has already sold its 800 Huntington Avenue facility, which it is now occupying as a tenant until it moves into the new space.

CBRI’s new home will bring the institute closer to its laboratories in the Warren Alpert Building on Longwood Ave., allowing for investigators to work in a centralized location. It also puts the institute in the heart of medical and research facilities. In addition, the Longwood consolidation will enable the institute to recruit new junior and senior investigators. CBRI has a goal of hiring three senior investigators and five or six junior investigators over the next several years.

The 18-story, 705,000-square-foot Center for Life Science Boston building is expected to be completed in September of next year.

Spine Symposium

The third annual Spine Symposium, titled “New Technology at the Intersection of Patient Care and Financial Resources,” takes place on Wednesday, Oct. 11. The event, which honors Augustus White, the Ellen and Melvin Gordon professor of medical education at HMS, will discuss technological advances in treating spine problems. Speakers will discuss a range of topics, including scoliosis treatment, ethical considerations, and the treatment of spine disease in West Africa. The symposium also includes a review of new technologies; perspectives from insurance carriers, the medical-device industry, and hospitals; and a panel discussion. Registration is required. The fee is $25, or $50 if requesting CME credits. For more information, contact Stacy Lewis at 617-667-2140 or selewis@bidmc.harvard.edu.

Transplant Medicine Advanced Through Professorship

Photo by Liza Green, HMS Media Services

In a ceremony on May 25, the Medical School and two of its affiliated hospitals, Brigham and Women’s and Children’s, announced the establishment of the Warren E. Grupe/John P. Merrill Professorship in Transplantation Medicine. In his introduction to the speaking program, Raphael Dolin, the HMS dean for academic and clinical programs, called the chair “an important element in a collaboration between Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Children’s Hospital Boston, providing important funding to foster innovation in research and clinical medicine.” The hospital presidents on the program, James Mandell of Children’s and Gary Gottlieb of the Brigham, also emphasized the legacy of collaboration that the chair represents.

In addition to John Merrill, who took part in the first successful kidney transplant with Joseph Murray in 1954, the chair honors Warren Grupe, William Harmon, and the first incumbent, Mohamed Sayegh. Grupe was an influential nephrologist at Children’s, who is now at the University of Virginia School of Medicine. Harmon is the director of the Children’s Nephrology Division, which Grupe established in 1973. The chair will permanently bear the name of William Harmon when he retires.

The chair supports the research efforts of Sayegh, director of the Transplantation Research Center, a collaboration between Children’s and the Brigham, and it focuses largely on transplantation immunobiology. At the celebration, Sayegh called his appointment to the chair “an unbelievable honor.” Pictured above from left are Mandell, Grupe, Sayegh, Murray, and Harmon.

Wasserstrom Chair Strengthens Research in Autoimmunity

Photo by Jeff Thiebauth

HMS dean Joseph Martin began the May 10 celebration of the Samuel Wasserstrom Professorship of Neurology by thanking the biotechnology company Biogen Idec, which supported the chair along with Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Named after the maternal grandfather of Howard Weiner (above right), who is the Robert L. Kroc professor of neurology at HMS and BWH, the chair honors Weiner and the first incumbent, Vijay Kuchroo (above left), for their work in multiple sclerosis and autoimmunity. Upon Weiner’s retirement, the chair will bear his name.

When it was Kuchroo’s turn to speak, he praised Weiner as a visionary and a builder and, addressing him, made clear, “I don’t want you to retire anytime soon.”

Kuchroo thanked his other mentors, as well, and all the people in his lab. Speaking of the pace and scope of research and the capacity to study many molecular pathways at the same time, he said, “Looking at the future, I feel that we are at an incredible juncture.”

Weiner was among the leaders who gave remarks prior to Kuchroo. Filling in background on the chair’s current name, he told the story of his grandfather Wasserstrom, who had taken his daughter—Weiner’s mother—aside one day and told her that her first child would be a doctor. Weiner said that his mother had told him this story when he was a youngster, and so, being the first child, he had always felt destined for medicine. His grandfather never saw the fruit of his prediction. Weiner’s mother and her family came to the United States during World War II, but his grandfather never made it out of Austria. Before he could join his family, he was detained and, ultimately, killed in the Holocaust.

“Of one thing, I am sure,” Weiner said. “My grandfather’s spirit now not only looks after me, he looks after Vijay.”

Happy Birthday, Dr. Richmond

A special program, “Child Health and Development in the 21st Century,” will celebrate the 90th birthday of Julius Richmond, HMS professor emeritus of health policy and former U.S. Surgeon General. Hosted by the Department of Social Medicine at HMS and the HSPH François-Xavier Bagnound Center for Health and Human Rights, the Sept. 26 symposium will also mark the launch of the new Center of the Developing Child at Harvard University. The goal of the program is to establish an agenda for advancing the healthy development of children through research, education, policy, and practice.

For more information, a list of speakers, or to register, visit www.hsph.harvard.edu/richmond.

Honors and Advances

• Merit Cudkowicz, HMS professor of neurology at Massachusetts General Hospital, will be presented with the Muscular Dystrophy Association’s Diamond Award Thursday, September 28, during the MDA’s “Wings Over Wall Street” fundraiser in New York City. Cudkowicz is being honored for her leadership in drug development and clinical trials in the field of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.

• Cynthia Grosskreutz, HMS assistant professor of ophthalmology and co-director of Glaucoma Services at the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary, was recently awarded a $50,000 prize for her discovery of an enzyme that contributes to nerve cell death in the eye as a result of glaucoma. The Lewis Rudin Glaucoma Prize recognizes the most significant glaucoma research published in a peer-reviewed journal. The winning paper, “Calcineurin Cleavage Is Triggered by Elevated Intraocular Pressure, and Calcineurin Inhibition Blocks Retinal Ganglion Cell Death in Experimental Glaucoma” appeared in the August 2005 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

• Stephen Harrison, Howard Hughes investigator and HMS professor of biological chemistry and molecular pharmacology, was awarded the Gregori Aminoff Prize by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. Harrison was honored for his work on virus crystallography.

• Howard Hiatt, HMS professor of medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, was inducted into the Royal College of Physicians of London. The college, the oldest medical institution in England, works to uphold and improve standards of medical practice. Hiatt has made many contributions to medicine and medical education throughout his career, including establishing various new programs while the dean of HSPH from 1972 to 1984.

• Raymond Kelleher, HMS assistant professor of neurology at Massachusetts General Hospital, was recently honored with a Pew Scholars Award. The grants are awarded to 15 of the nation’s most promising early- to mid-career biomedical scientists. Kelleher is the first clinician/scientist from MGH to receive a Pew Scholars Award.

• The Howard Hughes Medical Institute honored Vamsi Mootha, HMS assistant professor of systems biology at Massachusetts General Hospital, with a Physician–Scientist Early Career Award, which comes with a $150,000 grant over three years. Mootha’s work involves using large dataset, computer-based technology to examine human disease.

• Steven Pearson, HMS associate professor of ambulatory care and prevention, was inducted as an honorary fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of London. The honor recognizes those who have given exceptional service to the science or practice of medicine.

• A Dynamic Approach to Learning Respiratory Physiology, by Michael Parker, HMS assistant professor of medicine at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, received the 2006 Dr. Frank H. Netter Award for Special Contributions to Medical Education. The award recognizes excellence in the development of visually oriented materials that have a significant impact on the way health sciences are taught and practiced.

• Anthony Rosenzweig, HMS associate professor of medicine, became the director of cardiovascular research and associate chief of the Division of Cardiology at Beth Israel Deaconess. In his new role, Rosenzweig will help expand the cardiovascular research program and clinical cardiology services. He was previously at Massachusetts General Hospital, where he most recently served as the director of the cardiovascular gene therapy program.

In Memoriam

Robert McCluskey, the Benjamin Castleman professor emeritus of pathology, the Mallinckrodt professor emeritus of pathology, and former head of pathology at Massachusetts General Hospital, died June 27 at the age of 83.

McCluskey received his AB from Yale University in 1944 and his MD from New York University School of Medicine in 1947. He completed his pathology training at Kings County Hospital and Bellevue Hospital, and taught at New York University until he was recruited to lead the pathology department at the State University of New York at Buffalo. He joined HMS in 1971, serving as the S. Burt Wolbach professor and chair of pathology at Children’s Hospital Boston. In 1979 he was named the Mallinckrodt professor of pathology and the head of the Department of Pathology at Massachusetts General Hospital. He spent the next three decades at MGH, becoming the Benjamin Castleman professor of pathology in 1982.

In 1993, the same year he retired as professor emeritus, McCluskey was awarded an NIH grant to study the molecular genetics of renal pathology. He also became a mentor to pathology residents, winning an Excellence in Teaching Award earlier this year.

McCluskey published more than 200 papers on the role of the immune system in kidney disease and was a leader in the study of inflammation and the use of immunofluorescence as an aid in depicting and diagnosing certain renal diseases. He was a founding editor of Clinical Immunology and Immunopathy and received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Renal Pathology Society.

McCluskey is survived by his wife, Jean; his son, James; his daughter, Ann Farr; and his brother, Donald.

Stella Van Praagh, HMS assistant professor of pathology at Children’s Hospital Boston, passed away on June 3.

The author of more than 100 scientific publications on pediatric cardiology, congenital cardiac pathology, and congenital heart surgery, Van Praagh played a key role in developing the diagnostic approach to the understanding of complex heart disease in infants and children that is now used worldwide. In addition, she clarified the pathologic anatomy and embryology of many different forms of structural heart disease in infants and children, which led to more accurate diagnoses and more successful surgical management.

Van Praagh graduated from the School of Medicine of the University of Athens, Greece, in 1952. Following nine years of postgraduate work, she was invited to join the pediatric cardiology staff of the Buffalo Children’s Hospital in New York in 1962. In the same year, she married Richard Van Praagh, now an HMS professor emeritus of pathology at Children’s, beginning a lifelong partnership in the home and at work.

Richard and Stella were a team in investigative pediatric cardiology and pathology, who were invited to join the staff of Children’s in 1965. They developed the Cardiac Registry, which today includes about 3,600 hearts and samples of hearts, along with cardiac records dating back to 1944. The American Heart Association honored the Van Praaghs with the Paul Dudley White Award in 2004, and the couple received the distinguished achievement award from the Society for Cardiovascular Pathology in 1999. The couple remained at Children’s until retiring in 2002.

In addition to her husband, Richard, Stella Van Praagh is survived by her sons, Alex and Andrew, and six grandchildren.

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