HEMATOLOGY: Screen Lands Drug to Boost Blood Stem Cells
Zebrafish embryos, slivers just a couple of millimeters long, have yielded a discovery that has the potential to help people restock their immune system after a bone marrow transplant. A study led by (left to right) Leonard Zon, Wolfram Goessling, and Trista North, published in the June 21 Nature, used the embryos as a screening tool for compounds that boost blood cell development. A compound that increases prostaglandins when added to bone marrow, resulted in greater blood cell production after transplants in mice.

LEADERSHIP: Flier Named HMS Dean
Harvard president Drew Faust announced on July 11 that Jeffrey Flier (pictured), the George C. Reisman professor of medicine at HMS and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, has been appointed the new dean of the Faculty of Medicine, effective Sept. 1. “This medical school is a national treasure,” said Flier, “and while it is a humbling thought that I will now have great responsibility for maintaining and enhancing the accomplishments of HMS, this is a responsibility that I accept with great optimism and excitement.”

HEALTH POLICY: Cost of Expanding Medicare to Near-elderly Uninsured Could Be Offset by Care Savings
Aging adults who are uninsured before receiving Medicare require costlier health care down the road. HMS researchers John Ayanian (left), J. Michael McWilliams, and colleagues found that people who were uninsured before receiving benefits at age 65 needed more intensive care than those who had been privately insured prior to receiving Medicare. This finding, reported in the July 12 New England Journal of Medicine, shows that the cost of expanding Medicare to people in their 50s and early 60s might be partially offset by limiting serious and costly diseases later in life.

CELL BIOLOGY: Cells Shape Up, Vesicles Don’t Ship Out
All day long, cell membranes pit and plunge into cells, the resulting vesicles carrying in iron and other molecules from the surface. The empty fatty cargo containers fuse back into the outer membrane. For decades, scientists have thought this process slammed to a halt during cell division. Overturning this assumption, a study in the May 8 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by Tom Kirchhausen (left) and Emmanuel Boucrot found that incoming traffic continues, taking up the excess membrane as the cell rounds up for mitosis. Briefly, all exits are blocked. Then the vesicles bubble to the surface, restoring the membrane when the daughter cells begin to separate.

NEUROLOGY: Trial May Turn Over New Leaf for Traditional Herb
Epileptic seizures are characterized by uncontrolled electrical activity so one way to control them would be to block substances in the brain, such as glutamate, that cause neurons to fire. Pharmaceutical companies have been racing to find glutamate-inhibiting compounds, with minimal success. Recently, Steven Schachter and his colleagues have identified a compound derived from spiky-looking Chinese club moss that does just that. When tested in a rodent model, huperzine A had a remarkable power to prevent seizures. In the fall, Schachter hopes to launch a small clinical trial of the compound.