Ragon Institute Bangsberg Receives Mentorship Award
Apr 26, 2012 Awards
Dr. David Bangsberg receives prestigious A. Clifford Barger Excellence in Mentoring Award from the Harvard Medical School Office for Diversity Inclusion and Community Partnership.
News
HPP Celebrates Seven Graduates of UKZN
Apr 18, 2012
On Monday, April 16, 2012, the HIV Pathogenesis Programme (HPP) at Doris Duke Medical Research Institute (DDMRI), part of the Nelson Mandela Medical School, University of KwaZulu Natal (UKZN) graduated 7 students– 5 PhDs and 2 Masters. It was a day of joyful celebration and great pride for everyone involved. The partnership between Ragon […]
Alter receives Top 10 Clinical Research Achievement Award
Apr 5, 2012 Awards
Ragon Institute investigator Dr. Galit Alter receives Top 10 Clinical Research Achievement Awards from the Clinical Research Forum (CRF). “The CRF is a nonprofit organization dedicated to providing national leadership in clinical research. Its mission is to generate support for clinical research and promote understanding of its impact on health and healthcare delivery. […]
Newsletter Vol 8: An Achievable Goal
Apr 1, 2012
The Ragon Institute celebrated three years of innovation and excellence on March 2, 2012. All Ragon Institute faculty and staff and their families and guests, collaborators from multiple continents, as well as donors Terry and Susan Ragon and their family, gathered at Walker Memorial on the MIT campus to mark this anniversary. In […]
Researchers Find Gene Which Transforms Influenza
Mar 25, 2012
Ragon-affiliated researcher, Dr. Abraham Brass and his team find a gene that can transform mild influenza to a life threatening disease. “A genetic discovery could help explain why flu makes some people seriously ill or kills them, while others seem able to bat it away with little more than a few aches, coughs and […]
Deeper view of HIV reveals impact of early mutations
Mar 8, 2012
BOSTON – Mutations in HIV that develop during the first few weeks of infection may play a critical role in undermining a successful early immune response, a finding that reveals the importance of vaccines targeting regions of the virus that are less likely to mutate. A new study in the journal PLoS Pathogens, led by […]
Study finds HIV-specific CD4 cells that control viral levels
Feb 29, 2012
A subpopulation of the immune cells targeted by HIV may play an important role in controlling viral loads after initial infection, potentially helping to determine how quickly infection will progress. In the February 29 issue of Science Translational Medicine, a team of researchers from the Ragon Institute of Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), MIT and Harvard […]
New Gates Foundation President of Global Health Visits
Feb 10, 2012
On Monday, February 6, 2012 the new President of Global Health for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Dr. Trevor Mundel, met with investigators from the Ragon Institute to learn about novel and cutting-edge research conducted at Ragon-affiliated laboratories. Prior to this meeting, Drs. Arup Chakraborty and Bruce Walker attended a breakfast with Dr. Mundel […]
Ndung’u Awarded HHM International Early Career Scientist
Feb 4, 2012 Awards
Dr. Thumbi Ndung’u, Ragon Institute Associate Member, is awarded the prestigious Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) Early Career Scientist award. “Growing up in the rural village of Gathugu, Kiambu, in central Kenya, Thumbi Ndung’u routinely saw members of his community fight—and lose—the battle against many preventable diseases. Then AIDS emerged, seemingly out of nowhere, and […]
Alternative funding: Sponsor my science
Jan 18, 2012
Philanthropists will sometimes give large sums of money to support science — but researchers have to learn how to sell themselves first. “Asking someone to give you a million dollars is not easy. In 1995, Bruce Walker was seeking philanthropic support to expand his HIV research programme at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. He had […]
Newsletter Vol 7: Top Achievments of 2011
Jan 18, 2012
With a daily focus on excellence, researchers at the Ragon Institute have pushed HIV research forward over the past year. During 2011, 43 individual Ragon scientists wrote and published 83 publications and many were promoted to faculty positions or won prestigious fellowship awards. Highlighted below are the top four accomplishments of 2011: […]
Promising Results Shown in Novel Combination HIV Vaccine
Jan 4, 2012
BOSTON — New vaccine research suggests that scientists are homing in on the critical ingredients of a protective HIV vaccine and identifies new HIV vaccine candidates to test in human clinical trials. The new findings appear online in the journal Nature on January 4, 2012. Led by Dan H. Barouch, MD, PhD, Chief of […]
Ragon Named One of Boston’s Top Medical Breakthroughs of 2012
Dec 27, 2011
“An HIV vaccine has remained elusive for decades, in part because just when researchers think they have it pinned down, the wily virus mutates and slips away. As MIT immunologist Arup Chakraborty observes, HIV is so protean that a single infected person can have as many strains of the virus in his body as there […]
HPP Holds First Annual World AIDS Day Event
Dec 12, 2011 Ragon Culture
The theme of HIV Pathogenesis Programme‘s (HPP) first annual World AIDS Day event, held December 2011, was an “Update on progress made towards the development of a safe and effective HIV vaccine.” The purpose was to educate the community in Umlazi, a township on the east coast of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, about the vaccine research […]
Microsoft Research: Seeking Solutions in Africa
Nov 28, 2011
Microsoft Research and the Ragon Institute have collaborated on a new way to fight HIV. Microsoft researcher David Heckerman catalogs fragments of HIV that are vulnerable to attack by the immune system. The amount of data generated is enormous, but by using thousands of Microsoft machines working in parallel, researchers are able to make computations […]
Newsletter Vol 6: Ragon Summer Student Program
Oct 1, 2011
Each summer, Ragon hosts students from high school to college levels as part of the Ragon Summer Student Program, encouraging and support future scientists. For eight weeks, students work under a faculty mentor matched to them by their area of interest. Students generally learn to perform several types of experiments, write protocols and learn […]