A Pill to Control Obesity?


Not yet, but HSCI researchers have taken a giant step forward toward reducing the toll of the obesity epidemic creating a system using human stem cells to screen for compounds that turn "bad" fat cells to "good." The work by HSCI Principal Faculty member Chad Cowan and colleagues have already identified two compounds that in humans can turn energy-storing white fat cells into metabolically superior, energy-burning brown fat. And one of those compounds is already a drug approved for another use. You can read the full story here.

The Dish On Pain

It's taken more than a half-decade of dedicated work, but an HSCI team at Harvard and Boston Children's Hospital has succeeded in turning human skin cells into pain-sensing neurons. This pioneering work lead by Principal Faculty member Clifford Woolf, MD, PhD, co-leader of HSCI's Nervous System Diseases Program, should markedly improve the understanding and analysis of pain, as well as hasten the development of new, more effective drugs specifically targeting the neurons involved in both acute and  inflammatory pain. And here's the rest of the story.

VIDEO: The Incredible Journey

 

HSCI Executive Committee Chairman, Leonard Zon, explains his Lab's latest findings on the process by which blood stem cells are produced and incorporated into the blood system of zebrafish. Watch here

Research Updates

Blood Diseases Program

research addresses hurdles to future 

transplant-based, 

 gene-editing therapies.

 

Diabetes Program

Researchers reprogram stem cells for long-term use: 

insulin-producing beta cells  made from pancreatic exocrine cells remained functional 13 months later.

Media Mentions

2/15

Coverage of Doug Melton's creation of insulin-producing beta cells from human stem cells continues. Here's recent TV coverage of the breakthrough.

 

12/14

Science Magazine includes not one, but two HSCI findings in its Science Breakthroughs of The Year.

Learn what HSCI is doing for Hearing Loss (PDF)