IDI and CHB Enter Affiliation Agreement
"We are delighted at this opportunity to join forces with such a high-caliber team of researchers who share our interest in finding answers to some of the most vexing diseases, from lupus to diabetes to various cancers," says James Mandell, M.D., Chief Executive Officer of Children's Hospital Boston.
Whether condoms or abstinence, most efforts to prevent sexually transmitted diseases have a common logic: keep the pathogen out of your body altogether. While this approach is certainly reasonable enough, it doesn’t help the countless people worldwide who, for a number of reasons, are not in a position to control their sexual circumstances.
Image courtesy of Cell Host & Microbe, Judy Lieberman, January 22, 2009
Advances in Toxin Research at Kirchhausen Lab
Pictured: Cholera toxin (red) internalization in several mammalian epithelial cell lines proceeds via vesicles and tubules from the plasma membrane towards the perinuclear endosomal/Golgi area. Representative confocal images from middle sections of cells are shown.
New View on Regulatory Molecule
Denisa Wagner, Ph.D., and colleagues have shed light on the regulatory powers of a molecule called CalDAG-GEFI. Pictured: A micrograph of a small, injured blood vessel shows fibrin deposition (dark areas) that prevents leakage of blood into surrounding tissue.
Lieberman Lauded for HIV Research
Investigator Judy Lieberman's research is attacking AIDS on a number of fronts. Pictured: HeLa cells that have been treated with the T cell serine protease granzyme A in the presence of the pore forming protein perforin.
Featured News Story
Rao Lab uncovers a new lead for autoimmune disease
A drug derived from the hydrangea root, used for centuries in traditional Chinese medicine, shows promise in treating autoimmune disorders, report researchers from the Program in Cellular and Molecular Medicine and the Immune Disease Institute at Children’s Hospital Boston (PCMM/IDI), along with the Harvard School of Dental Medicine. In the June 5 edition of Science, they show that a small-molecule compound known as halofuginone inhibits the development of Th17 cells, immune cells recently recognized as important players in autoimmune disease, without altering other kinds of T cells involved in normal immune function. They further demonstrate that halofuginone reduces disease pathology in a mouse model of autoimmunity.
Currently there is no good treatment for autoimmune disorders; the challenge has been suppressing inflammatory attacks by the immune system on body tissues without generally suppressing immune function (thereby increasing risk of infections). The main… Read More »
Announcements
2009 Coley Award Winners Alt and Rajewsky Announced…
The Cancer Research Institute, Inc. (CRI), a nonprofit organization dedicated exclusively to the support and coordination of scientific and clinical efforts that will lead to the immunological treatment,… Read More »
Advocacy Through Images: Tragedy of Tuberculosis Captured…
“Struggle for Life” features images of patients under the care of GHC/CHC, along with text by Dr. Anne Goldfeld, IDI Senior Investigator and Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard… Read More »
