Gates Funds Study of HIV Controllers

Massachusetts General Hospital has received a five-year, $20.5 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to expand an international program investigating the biological factors underlying immune system control of HIV. The grant provides support to the International HIV Controllers Study, founded by Bruce Walker, HMS professor of medicine, which currently involves researchers from more than a dozen countries whose goal is to make discoveries that could lead to the design of a vaccine to limit viral replication. A primary focus is understanding genetic and immunological factors that have allowed a few individuals to control HIV naturally without the need for medications, some for longer than 25 years.

For more than 15 years it has been apparent that a small minority of HIV-positive people remained healthy despite many years of infection. In 2006 Walker and his colleagues established the study with a $2.5 million grant from the Mark and Lisa Schwartz Foundation and have already recruited nearly 1,000 of these controllers. With this new grant, the team plans to expand the study group to 2,000 participants from around the world and compare DNA from these individuals to genetic data from 3,000 people with progressive HIV infection, searching for genetic factors that may be associated with viremic control.

Other HMS-affiliated investigators taking part include David Altshuler, associate professor of genetics and of medicine; Sylvie Le Gall, assistant professor of medicine; Marcus Altfeld, associate professor of medicine, and Todd Allen, assistant professor of medicine, all at MGH; and Paul de Bakker, HMS research fellow in medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.

Endowed Chair Established in Eating Disorders

Jeffrey Flier (center), dean of the Faculty of Medicine, opened the Feb. 14 celebration of the Professorship in Psychiatry in the Field of Eating Disorders with praise for the first incumbent, David Herzog (left). Calling Herzog an “outstanding clinician,” Flier explained that the chair doubly honors him since upon his retirement the professorship will take his name. Director of the Harris Center for Education and Advocacy in Eating Disorders at Massachusetts General Hospital, Herzog “has served as the principal investigator in the longest running longitudinal study for eating disorders,” Flier said.

Liza Green, HMS Media Services

Following remarks by Peter Slavin, president of MGH, and Jerrold Rosenbaum, the Stanley Cobb professor of psychiatry and psychiatrist-in-chief at MGH, Herzog thanked contributors to the Harris Center and spoke about the importance of the chair in raising visibility for eating disorders and in supporting research. “We need to understand the causes,” he said. He also read from a letter written by the parents of a patient he had cared for but who ultimately died of anorexia. “I’m sure that you feel her loss as much as we do,” the letter said. The parents were in the audience.

As the ceremony was ending the father, Karsten Windeler (right), was so moved that he took the mike and, addressing Herzog, gave an impromptu blessing: “May your work answer all our and your patients' prayers,” he said.

New Appointments to Full and Named Professorships

The following faculty members were appointed to a full or named professorship in November and January.

Anthony Amato
Professor of Neurology
Brigham and Women’s Hospital
Amato has been involved in numerous clinical trials for muscular dystrophy, muscle channelopathies, inflammatory myopathies, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, myasthenia gravis, and various forms of peripheral neuropathy. Much of his research lately has focused on the characterization of the different types of inflammatory myopathies and muscle channelopathies and better understanding of the pathogenic basis of these disorders.

Harvey Cantor
Baruj Benacerraf Professor of Pathology
Dana–Farber Cancer Institute
Cantor defined two major subsets of T cells that regulate the immune response and recognize different classes of MHC molecules. Dissection of the molecular and cellular components of the immune response responsible for self tolerance and prevention of autoimmune disease remains the focus of his work. Cantor identifies and characterizes T cell genes and their products that regulate the immune response, including osteopontin (the previously defined secreted protein and a new intracellular isoform of Opn, termed Opn-i), the MHC class Ib molecule Qa-1, and a novel serine kinase termed MINK.

Isaac Kohane
Lawrence J. Henderson Professor of Pediatrics
Children’s Hospital Boston
Kohane’s research has followed a dual track: to obtain new insights into genomic physiologies so they can be translated into new diagnostics and therapeutics and to develop health information systems to enable us to better apply what is already known about medicine and about the individual patient. Most recently his research has focused on understanding adult diseases in the context of prenatal and perinatal development. He also is the director of the Countway Library of Medicine, where he codirects the HMS Center for Biomedical Informatics.

Thomas Lynch Jr.
Professor of Medicine
Massachusetts General Hospital
Lynch’s work centers on the development of targeted therapeutics for patients with non–small cell lung cancer. He played an integral role in the identification of epidermal growth factor tyrosine kinase (EGFR-TK) mutations as the molecular determinant of response to agents such as erlotinib and gefitinib. He leads a team that is working on novel agents to treat patients with resistance to standard EGFR-TK inhibitors. He has also worked on the development of monoclonal antibody therapy for lung cancer. He serves as chief of the Hematology–Oncology Unit at the MGH Cancer Center.

Harvey Makadon
Clinical Professor of Medicine
Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center
In addition to being a primary care physician, Makadon has focused on educating and writing about innovations in health care with the focus on improving health care for marginalized communities. He implemented a model of care for primary care physicians treating patients with HIV/AIDS at what is now Beth Israel Deaconess Healthcare Associates and founded the Boston AIDS Consortium. More recently, while working at Harvard Medical International, Makadon organized a nongovernmental organization in India to focus on educating clinicians to care for those affected by HIV/AIDS. Currently, he is the director of education and training at the Fenway Institute and is focused on developing educational programs for clinicians aimed at ending invisibility and improving care for the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender communities.

HST Student Takes 2008 Lemelson Prize

Timothy Lu, a graduate student in the Harvard–MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology (HST), is the 2008 winner of the $30,000 Lemelson–MIT Student Prize, which honors outstanding young inventors studying at MIT. Lu has devised processes that promise to enhance the effectiveness of antibiotics and help eradicate layers of bacterial biofilms, which resist antimicrobial treatment and breed on surfaces, such as those of medical, industrial, and food-processing equipment. Lu has engineered bacteriophages—viruses that infect bacteria, not human cells—to boost antibiotic effectiveness. The bacteriophages carry DNA that codes for factors targeting bacterial gene networks, which former treatments failed to reach, and destroy bacterial antibiotic resistance mechanisms. The weakened bacterial defenses allow antibiotics to perform better. Lu has also created enzymatically active bacteriophages that directly target the infection site of biofilms, where they can simultaneously penetrate the films’ protective slime layer and kill the bacteria underneath.

top