INFECTIOUS DISEASES: Topical Treatment Quashes Herpes with RNAi
Using RNA interference, or RNAi, Judy Lieberman (left), Yichao Wu, and colleagues developed a treatment that KOs the herpesvirus with a molecular one–two punch. It disables the bug’s ability to replicate as well as the host cell’s ability to take up the virus. The research, conducted in mice, demonstrated that the therapy is effective when applied anywhere from one week before infection to a few hours after viral exposure. The findings appear in the Jan. 22 Cell Host and Microbe. If they are successfully replicated in humans, people worldwide will have a new and powerful means of protecting themselves against this harmful pathogen.

LEADERSHIP: Frenk Voices Goals for School of Public Health
Julio Frenk, who began his deanship at HSPH on Jan. 1, addressed the faculty, staff, and students on Jan. 8, describing his ambitions for the School, including continued investment in the most promising students and most accomplished faculty.

GENETICS: Early Males on the Move
Somewhere in Africa, between 60,000 and 100,000 years ago, a small population of humans got it into their newly rounded skulls to set out across the continent and take up residence in the northeast corner. A study by Alon Keinan (right), David Reich, and colleagues suggests that the original out-of-Africa population included significantly more males than females and might have been fed by successive waves of mostly male migrants. The findings appear in the January Nature Genetics.

CELL BIOLOGY: Dual-purpose Mechanism Activates Protein, Drives Cell Motility
New work from HMS and Immune Disease Institute researchers has identified an elegant bit of mechanics at the heart of a cell’s ability to connect to an outside surface and pull itself across. The researchers, including (from left) Jianghai Zhu, Timothy Springer, and Chengzhong Zhang, created a crystal structure of the complete extracellular portion of an integrin, a membrane protein, then employed steered molecular dynamics to test its response to applied forces. They report in the Dec. 26, 2008, Molecular Cell that simple mechanical forces comparable to those exerted in vivo tug the molecule open and spring it into an active conformation, enabling it to grab onto an outside surface the way the tread on a tank does.

DRUG POLICY: Generics Meeting Frames History of Cheaper, Unbranded Drugs
Generic drugs work as well as their name-brand counterparts and even better in some situations, published evidence shows. Yet most doctors and patients still prefer the branded products. This disconnect between science and perception may be inhibiting the full public health value of generic drugs, according to experts in law, business, health policy, history, and therapeutics who gathered on Dec. 11 and 12 at a conference organized by Jeremy Greene (left) and colleagues to discuss generics and health. The conference was the first major event of the Harvard Interfaculty Initiative on Medications and Society, headed by Jerry Avorn (right).

Copyright 2009 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College