Is Functional MRI The New X-Ray Vision?
Nearly a century after the introduction of X-ray, the debut of the imaging technique functional magnetic resonance imaging reopened some of the same questions about the nature of seeing and knowing—casting an even keener eye, perhaps, on the matter of what makes us who we are. If X-ray made the invisible visible by revealing our inner anatomies—the structural […]
Researchers Developing a Pill that Lasts and Lasts
Mass General researchers are working on a flexible polymer pill that could provide a month’s worth of medication at a time before passing harmlessly through the body. The pill could help to increase patient adherence to prescribed medicines. Failure to take medicines as prescribed is estimated to cost more than $100 billion in avoidable hospitalizations […]
Female STEM Professionals Honored in Male-Dominated Field
Comments on gender and science from Susan A. Slaugenhaupt, PhD, the Scientific Director of the Massachusetts General Hospital Research Institute and a research scientist with more than two decades of experience at the bench. Slaugenhaupt was recently named a Woman to Watch in Boston’s science and technology community by the Boston Business Journal. Award winner […]
The Guide: Have a Heart
At Mass General’s Ott Laboratory for Organ Engineering and Regeneration, a small army of postdocs is drawing on the tenets of tissue engineering and stem cell science to develop “bioartificial” organs and limbs for patients in need. While it sounds like something cooked up in the pages of a Michael Crichton thriller, this novel approach has the potential to […]
A Flu Scare, 10 Years Later
When Proto Magazine: Dispatches From the Frontiers of Medicine launched its inaugural issue in 2005, researchers were anxiously watching a new flu virus called H5N1, which many were concerned might lead to a global pandemic. Although no global crisis came from the virus, that fear is very much alive. In this video, Dr. Martin Hirsch, a senior physician in […]
Brain Disease Researchers Track Elusive Protein
Devastating brain diseases like Frontotemporal Dementia and Alzheimer’s have been painfully slow to give up their secrets. But behavioral neurologist Brad Dickerson, MD, and his Mass General research team are tracking an important protein that has long eluded measurement in the living brain. Their work may mark a turning point in how such now-incurable conditions are understood and […]
Researchers Find New Zika Clues to Birth Defect in Fetus Study
“An autopsy of the fetus showed microcephaly or small head size, as well as severe brain injury and high levels of the Zika virus in fetal brain tissues, exceeding levels of the virus typically found in blood samples, researchers in Slovenia from the University Medical Center in Ljubljana reported in the New England Journal of Medicine. The findings help “strengthen […]