DIAGNOSTICS: Tracing Breast Cancer
Several years ago, Marsha Moses and her colleagues set themselves a diagnostic challenge: could they tell by testing a woman’s urine whether or not she might develop cancer? The results are finally in and it appears that the urine of certain at-risk women exhibits much higher levels of MMP-9 and a related enzyme, ADAM-12. The findings, which appear in the May 22 Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers and Prevention, and others coming out of the Moses lab are helping to bring a radically new perspective on the common practice of collecting and analyzing urine.

DEVELOPMENT: Eye Drives Restructuring of Young Brain
Our brains are wired for life by our experiences as babies and children. In a finding that may have broader implications, Takao Hensch and his colleagues show that newly opened eyes send a protein messenger from the retina to the back of the brain to begin shaping the visual system. The protein, known as an embryonic transcription factor, belongs to a large family that might act more broadly to trigger neural plasticity in other areas of the brain. The paper appears in the Aug. 8 Cell.

LEADERSHIP: School of Public Health Names New Dean
Julio Frenk, former Mexican minister of health, will become the new dean of the Harvard School of Public Health in January. He succeeds Barry Bloom, who is stepping down as dean at the end of December following a decade of service.

NEUROLOGY: Approved Drug Shows Promise for Brain Injury in Premature Infants
Babies born very prematurely are at high risk for brain injury linked to cerebral palsy and other neurological disorders. Now a study in the June 25 Journal of Neuroscience by Frances Jensen (right), Simon Manning, and colleagues demonstrates that a drug already approved by the Food and Drug Administration may prevent the damage. The drug blocks a particular kind of cell receptor in the white matter of the brain, which plays a role in inducing cell death due to lack of oxygen or blood supply. No medications currently exist to treat this sort of injury in these young patients.

TISSUE ENGINEERING: Cell-filled Building Blocks Take Bottom-up Approach to Organ Architecture
Tissue engineers have traditionally employed cellular scaffolds to try to recreate the geometric constructs found in natural tissue. But this approach has proved problematic. Ali Khademhosseini has pioneered a new, bottom-up approach to tissue engineering that uses “living Legos,” microgel-based building blocks infused with cells, to build organs from the bottom up. Though still in its early stages, the approach is being systematically improved by Khademhosseini. His most recent advancement, self-assembling building blocks, is described in the July 15 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and brings tissue engineering one step closer to the goal of creating functional, mass-producible organs.

Copyright 2008 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College