Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center (DF/HCC) has been awarded a $12 million grant from the National Cancer Institute (NCI) to bring promising ovarian cancer research from the laboratory to clinical practice. The highly competitive Specialized Programs of Research Excellence (SPORE) grant will help fund three research studies on overcoming the problem of treatment resistance in ovarian cancer and enable DF/HCC- affiliated institutions to build…
It was not quite noon yet, but Mirembe had already had a long day. She had come to Butabika Hospital in Uganda early that morning, first to see a nurse and a doctor, and now stepped into a warm, sparsely-furnished office. Sitting down across the table from a research assistant, she wondered how long she was going to be there. But she…
People who survive serious COVID-19 have long-lasting immune responses against SARS-COV-2, according to a new study led by Harvard Medical School researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital. The study, published in Science Immunology, offers hope that people infected with the virus will develop lasting protection against reinfection. The findings also demonstrate that measuring antibodies can be an accurate tool for tracking the…
Erika Wolf, PhD, clinical research psychologist for the National Center for PTSD at the VA Boston Healthcare System and associate professor of psychiatry, is the recipient of a four-year, $1.7 million R01 award from the National Institute on Aging (NIA) to study traumatic stress related accelerated cellular aging in the brain. She will use magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to measure…
One of the most remarkable recent advances in biomedical research has been the development of highly targeted gene-editing methods such as CRISPR that can add, remove, or change a gene within a cell with great precision. The method is already being tested or used for the treatment of patients with sickle cell anemia and cancers such as multiple myeloma and…
Using a modified version of a standard serology test, BUSM researchers have found SARS-CoV-2 reactive antibodies in samples collected before the start of the pandemic, revealing antibody immunity to the virus that causes COVID-19 in unexposed people. “Pre-existing T cell immunity to SARS-CoV-2 has been reported, but to our knowledge it was previously unclear if SARS-CoV-2 cross-reactive antibodies are present…
Each year, the flu vaccine has to be redesigned to account for mutations that the virus accumulates, and even then, the vaccine is often not fully protective for everyone. Researchers at MIT and the Ragon Institute of MIT, MGH, and Harvard are now working on strategies for designing a universal flu vaccine that could work against any flu strain. In…
CAR T cell therapy is a unique type of treatment used in cancer, in which scientists take immune cells, known as T cells, from a patient and add Chimeric Antigen Receptors (CAR) to program the T cells to recognize and attack cancer cells. The CAR T cells are then returned to the body, where they are able to find and…
In a new study, a team of scientists based at The Picower Institute for Learning and Memory at MIT and the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research reveals evidence showing that the most prominent Alzheimer’s disease risk gene may disrupt a fundamental process in a key type of brain cell. Moreover, in a sign of how important it is to delve…
When the brain forms a memory of a new experience, neurons called engram cells encode the details of the memory and are later reactivated whenever we recall it. A new MIT study reveals that this process is controlled by large-scale remodeling of cells’ chromatin. This remodeling, which allows specific genes involved in storing memories to become more active, takes place…