Ragon Institute
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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: […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
Jul 1, 2011
This spring saw employees and faculty of the Ragon Institute more involved in the community than ever before. From community events to student education, Ragon showed its commitment, not only to research, but also to care for those infected with HIV/AIDS. The Annual AIDS Walk The 26th annual AIDS Walk and 5K Run is […]
Apr 5, 2011
Ragon Institute 2nd Year Anniversary On March 19, 2011, more than 400 Ragon Institute employees, donors and collaborators gathered at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library & Museum at Columbia Point, Quincy, Massachusetts to celebrate the two year anniversary of the founding of the Ragon Institute of Mass General, MIT, and Harvard. The event […]
Jan 20, 2011
2010 HPP Retreat in South Africa Communication and collaboration is the lifeblood of real scientific progress. Researchers often work long hours focused on their own research but getting together periodically with others in their field to share results gives a fresh perspective which often moves research forward. This past October, Ragon Institute faculty, researchers […]