all David Scadden stories

Stem Cell Summit hails bench progress, looks to bedside future

404132862 — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 11:31:13 -0400

New discoveries concerning cell reprogramming over the past year have boosted stem cell researchers in the lab and encouraged efforts to transfer test tube and lab animal advances to humans suffering degenerative diseases such as diabetes, Parkinson’s disease, and Lou Gehrig’s disease.

Leaders of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute (HSCI) and Harvard President Drew Faust hailed advances in the last year as significant steps in the drive to understand and one day treat these diseases, which afflict millions around the world.

GlaxoSmithKline and Harvard Stem Cell Institute announce major collaboration agreement

404132862 — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 15:00:05 -0400

GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) and the Harvard Stem Cell Institute (HSCI) today announced that they have entered into a five-year, $25 million-plus collaborative agreement to build a unique alliance in stem cell science to hasten the development of treatments and cures for a range of diseases.

Cancer drug activates adult stem cells

404132862 — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 10:35:29 -0500

The use of a drug used in cancer treatment activates stem cells that differentiate into bone appears to cause regeneration of bone tissue and be may be a potential treatment strategy for osteoporosis, according to a report in the February 2008 Journal of Clinical Investigation.

Flier hails new, cooperative era in Harvard science

404132862 — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 14:02:11 -0500

Harvard Medical School Dean Jeffrey Flier Friday evening issued a call for new approaches to advance the fight against disease, embracing cross-institutional collaborations at Harvard as a way to bring new thinking to old problems.

Flier, the keynote speaker at the Fourth Annual Tony and Shelly Malkin Stem Cell Symposium at the Harvard Club of Boston, said he has spent a lot of time in his first months as Harvard Medical School Dean thinking about how and why the School does business. As he has gone through this process, Flier said, he’s given thought to who people mean when they speak of “we” at the Medical School.

Stem Cell Summit draws 500 participants

404132862 — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 12:44:43 -0400

Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick Wednesday (Oct. 3) called on those attending the second day of a Harvard Stem Cell Institute (HSCI)-sponsored Stem Cell Summit to support his proposed $1 billion life sciences initiative “so we can get partnering with you.”

While Massachusetts has a unique concentration of researchers, academic institutions, biotech companies, and investment in the life sciences, “we can’t just rest on our laurels,” Patrick said. “I ask you to make your voices heard,” the governor continued. “Make your interests known. When the bill comes out for hearings — show up.”

New department approved

50443248 — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 16:08:11 -0400

The Harvard Corporation has approved, with the support of the deans of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) and the Harvard Medical School (HMS), the establishment of a new Department of Developmental and Regenerative Biology, the first academic department in Harvard’s 371-year history to be based in more than one of the University’s Schools. The new department will bring together researchers from the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and Harvard Medical School.

HSCI/MGH researchers identify gene product involved in stem cell aging and death

Thu, 12 Jul 2007 12:20:44 -0400

A multi-institutional team of Harvard researchers may have advanced our understanding of physiological aging with a new study in which they greatly reduced the impact of aging on blood stem cells. A report on their findings appears in the latest edition of the journal Nature along with similar but independent findings from research teams at the universities of North Carolina and Michigan.

The Harvard team, led by David T. Scadden, has demonstrated that reducing the accumulation of the cyclin-dependent kinase inhibitor p16INK4a, a gene product previously noted to increase in aging cells, may reduce the physiological impact of aging on adult stem cells, and may improve the ability of aged tissues to repair themselves. Scadden is co-director of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute (HSCI) and director of the Center for Regenerative Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH).

The researchers found that reducing the accumulation of p16INK4a in haematopoietic stem cells (blood stem cells) reduces cell death as well as defects in the ability of the cells to repopulate.

"There are two things about this that are important," Scadden said. "It shows that specific properties of aging stem cells directly contribute to the reduced healing that occurs with aging; and it indicates that one might be able to modify a single gene product and improve the function of aging stem cells and repair of aging tissue - and that is very encouraging. This may mean that there are opportunities to target this gene product with medication and potentially decrease the impact of aging.

"However," Scadden noted, "p16INK4a is also known to suppress tumor formation, so a judicious balance must be struck between reduced p16INK4a when needed for repair and sufficient p16INK4a to prevent emergence of malignant stem cells."

The findings by the teams at Harvard, Michigan, and UNC indicate that they may have discovered a generalized mechanism by which various types of tissues have altered healing with age. Thus, discovering ways to suppress p16INK4a could potentially have an ameliorating effect on age-related cell death and repair of tissue damage throughout the body.

The Scadden team includes Viktor Janzen, Randolf Forkert, Heather E. Fleming, and Yoriko Saito, of HSCI and MGH; Michael T. Waring and David M. Dombkowski of MGH; Ronald A. DePinho of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School; and Norman E. Sharpless of the Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine.

Advances in stem cell biology presented at symposium

50443248 — Thu, 19 Jul 2007 15:54:58 -0400

Stem cell science is revolutionizing the field of cancer biology, changing the understanding of the structure of some tumors, and potentially shifting the treatment emphasis from eliminating all tumor cells to the destruction of specialized cancer stem cells believed responsible for tumor growth.
These findings were among several presented Dec. 2 at the Harvard Club of Boston during the Second Annual Tony and Shelly Malkin Stem Cell Symposium, which drew more than 300.

The symposium, titled "Stem Cell Biology and Therapy in Organ Systems: Challenges and Opportunities," was the second annual event aimed at bringing a broad community together to discuss stem cell research.

Stem cell science

70652986 — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 05:35:57 -0400

"Stem-cell transplants are already performed every day in Harvard-affiliated hospitals -- and around the world," says Harvard Stem Cell Initiative codirector David Scadden, professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and director of the Center for Regenerative Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital. So-called bone-marrow transplants, which transfer tens of thousands of cells of many different kinds to a patient, most critically transfer hematopoietic (adult blood) stem cells. The proliferative capacity of these cells is so great, says Scadden, that researchers have demonstrated in mice the regeneration of the entire blood and immune system from a single cell. Hematopoietic stem cells routinely save the lives of people with diseases such as leukemia, lymphoma, and immune deficiencies. Why is this promising area of research, with the potential to do so much good, so controversial? The seeming simplicity of the idea -- that there are stem cells that can generate new cells -- belies the complexity of the science and the ethical ramifications of its application. A special report from Harvard Magazine investigates the work that Harvard researchers are doing to understand all the ramifications of the stem-cell revolution.

Researchers boost blood cancer fight

70652986 — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 05:32:45 -0400

Working with colleagues at the University of Rochester School of Medicine, Harvard researchers found that giving mice a hormone known for building bones increased their production of blood stem cells. If it works in humans as in mice, the advance could provide additional hope for patients suffering from leukemia, myeloma, or lymphoma who need bone marrow transplants. The researchers, largely based at Massachusetts General Hospital's (MGH) Center for Regenerative Medicine and Technology, have begun setting up a phase 2 trial to test their findings in human subjects. They predict the trial will begin early next year. Associate Professor of Medicine David Scadden, director of MGH's Center for Regenerative Medicine and Technology, and his colleagues' research indicated that, coupled with parathyroid hormone treatments, it may be possible to use fewer stem cells in a transplant. That would make transplants with fewer cells, as would occur in the use of umbilical cord cells, a safer procedure. Whatever the case, either having more stem cells available for transplant or needing fewer would benefit patients, Scadden said. The study was published in the Oct. 23, 2003 issue of the journal Nature.

Tissue engineering produces an artificial gland

70652986 — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 05:04:38 -0400

Your thymus is a walnut-sized gland that sits just above your heart. The master gland of the immune system, one of the thymus' chief functions is to produce T lymphocytes, which are a type of white blood cell that works to prevent disease. In July 2000, a team of Harvard Medical School researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital, including Associate Professor of Medicine David Scadden, unveiled a man-made structure that mimics the thymus by churning out human T cells. The building blocks for this "organoid" were CellFoam, a synthetic material manufactured by Cytomatrix of Woburn, Mass., and tissue from humans and mice.