ENDOCRINOLOGY: Big Difference Emerges Between Body Fats
Visceral fat, the accumulation of white fat around the internal organs, has long been associated with insulin resistance, type 2 diabetes, and atherosclerosis. But new research from C. Ronald Kahn, Thien Tran, and colleagues, reported in the May Cell Metabolism, suggests that the location of fat is not the only factor. An experiment that employed fat transplant surgery to explore the role of location on the behavior of subcutaneous and visceral fats showed that visceral fat and subcutaneous fat have different intrinsic, location-independent properties. While visceral fat seems to have ill effects on health, subcutaneous fat plays a protective role against metabolic disease.

STRATEGIC PLANNING: Therapeutics Taken Up as Possible Research Priority
A new report on therapeutics from the strategic planning advisory group on biomedical research recommends that HMS consider making a major investment in organizing efforts in therapeutic discovery. The goal is to help people doing basic and clinical research at HMS translate their work to benefit patients, said Donald Coen. He led the team that issued the report detailing possible directions the School could take in therapeutics, chemical biology, and pharmacology.

NEUROLOGY: Revived Technique Shows Promise for Spinal-cord Injury Repair
After a spinal-cord injury, nerves located below the lesion are cut off from life-giving electrical signals. Researchers have tried rescuing these at-risk peripheral nerves by attaching them to fibers emanating from above the lesion, a technique called neurotization. Yang (Ted) Teng and colleagues have discovered that the innervation provided by the rerouted nerves results in renewed activity not just in the target organ but in the previously silenced and sequestered spinal cord. The findings appear in the May Regenerative Medicine.

PUBLIC HEALTH : Tracing the Biology of Experience
Early childhood experiences play a major role in shaping a youngster’s growing brain. Toxic stress in one’s youth may cause health problems and disease in later life. This, at least, is the suspicion of a team of researchers embarking on a cradle-to-grave study of how early experiences embed themselves in biology and possibly lay the foundation for hypertension, diabetes, and heart disease in adulthood. Among the investigators are (from left) Takao Hensch, Laura Kubzansky, and Charles Nelson.

Copyright 2008 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College