IN THE NEWS

Five in Community Win HHMI Early Career Awards

The Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) has selected 50 new Early Career Scientists, which include five researchers with ties to HMS. Each Early Career Scientist receives a salary, benefits and $1.5 million in research funding during a six-year appointment, and because HHMI does not fund particular projects, the recipients have the freedom to explore and, if necessary, change direction in their research. The awards are designed to target scientists at a time in their careers when start-up funding from their host institutions is coming to an end. The recipients from the Harvard medical community are listed below.

Photo by Maria Nemchuk	Photo by Michael Uchanski	Photo by MGH Photography
Photo by Robert Bachrach	Photo by Graham Ramsay	Clockwise from bottom, Rachel Wilson, Amy Wagers, Bradley Bernstein, Kevin Eggan and Konrad Hochedlinger

Bradley ­Bernstein, HMS assistant professor of pathology at Massachusetts General Hospital, has developed research tools to study the DNA–protein packaging called chromatin on a genomewide scale to understand its full impact in disease. He plans to investigate how chromatin helps stem cells decide when to commit to developing into a particular cell type.

Kevin Eggan, assistant professor in the Department of Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology (SCRB), which is based at both HMS and the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences, and an assistant investigator at the Harvard Stem Cell Institute, is working with human embryonic stem cells and induced pluripotent stem cells to study amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). He has successfully derived motor neurons from human embryonic stem cells and used them to observe how neurons are destroyed in ALS, revealing that motor neurons do not commit suicide but are killed by another component of the nervous system, the glial cells.

Konrad Hochedlinger, HMS assistant professor of medicine at MGH, developed a way to create induced pluripotent stem cells using adenoviruses instead of retroviruses, which can integrate with the host genome and lead to the development of cancer. Through detailed examinations of the mechanisms that enable genetic reprogramming, Hochedlinger intends to further improve stem cell models for studying development and disease.

Amy Wagers, HMS assistant professor of pathology at Joslin Diabetes Center and a SCRB faculty member, studies blood-forming and muscle-forming stem cells with an eye toward treating diseases such as cancer, anemia, muscular dystrophy and diabetes. Her work suggests that defects in aging stem cells may be reversible, and she has established in mice the feasibility of stem cell therapy for treating degenerative muscle disease.

Rachel Wilson, HMS assistant professor of neurobiology, studies how the brain processes information about odors and other types of sensory stimuli using techniques she developed to measure the electrical activity of individual neurons in the fruit fly brain in vivo. By comparing the molecules and neural circuits that process sensory stimuli in different regions of the fly brain, Wilson hopes to reveal fundamental principles about how those circuits are organized and how they process information efficiently.

Funding Renewed for Infectious-disease Research Center

The New England Regional Center of Excellence for Biodefense and Emerging Infectious Diseases (NERCE) may have a lengthy name, but its mission is simple: fostering safe and effective multidisciplinary research on infectious diseases. Funded in 2003 for five years by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), the center has just received its second round of funding for the next five years, with a total of $10 million for the first year.

The New England Regional Center, with HMS as the lead institution, is one of 11 such centers across the country. “Our network of research collaborations supports basic science and translational research,” said Dennis Kasper, the William Ellery Channing professor of microbiology and molecular genetics and scientific director and principal investigator of the NERCE program. “Our goal is to develop therapeutics and vaccines against current and emerging infectious-disease threats.”

These threats are myriad, including everything from such potential bioweapons as anthrax to food- and waterborne pathogens such as E. coli and salmonella; viruses such as West Nile and those causing eastern equine encephalitis and hepatitis C; and emerging threats such as virulent influenza and multidrug-resistant tuberculosis.

To attack these and other NIAID “priority pathogens,” NERCE harnesses recent advances in genomics, proteomics, structural biology, immunology, vaccinology, chemistry, drug screening and materials science. “We are a catalyst for collaborative efforts and creative thinking,” said Gerald Beltz, associate director for research at NERCE and an HMS research associate in microbiology and molecular genetics. “And as a bridge to industry, we’re looking to take some of the risk out of the development process.”

Among the center’s primary objectives are to establish programs of investigator-initiated research; train researchers to work with biodefense and emerging infectious-disease pathogens; create core facilities to support research; develop capacity for translational research; and provide facilities and scientific support to first responders in a national emergency involving bioweapons or infectious diseases. The center funds research projects, developmental pilot projects, career development fellows, new opportunities projects and core laboratories (microbiology and animal resources, small-molecule screening, biomolecule production and live-cell imaging). NERCE serves the six New England states, although its molecular screening laboratory is a national core facility.

Among its many achievements during its first five years, the center directly supported 65 investigators from 15 New England institutions; played a critical role in establishing the ICCB-­Longwood screening facility; produced 101 peer-reviewed publications; and provided additional HMS resources for NMR, RNA interference and mass spectrometry. In a unique approach, NERCE does not charge a fee for its services—a particular benefit for beginning investigators.

During the next five years, NERCE plans 13 research programs with three themes: enveloped highly pathogenic RNA viruses (such as ebola), bacterial pathogens (toxins, pathogenesis and immunity) and discovery of small molecules as molecular probes and therapeutic lead compounds. The center also plans to support developmental pilot projects, career development fellows and workshops. “Our mission is to discover innovative ways of combating biological threats, whether intentional or naturally occurring,” said Kasper. “With this new funding, we are well on our way to fulfilling this mission.”

—Jan Reiss

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