HSCI news briefs

Two HSCI scientists receive state life sciences grants and corporate support

HSCI Co-director David Scadden, MD, and Affiliated Faculty member Xi He, PhD, have each won two-year, half-million- dollar competitive grants – and industry sponsorship, from the Massachusetts Life Sciences Center, which oversees the state’s $1 billion Life Sciences Initiative. GlaxoSmithKline is partnering with Scadden, whose laboratory at Massachusetts General Hospital will test ways to make bone marrow transplants safer. Pfizer is working with He of Boston Children’s Hospital, who is exploring treatments that could possibly reverse osteoporosis.

HSCI co-sponsors ISSCR international stem cell conference in Boston

Over 4,000 stem cell scientists gathered at the Boston Convention Center from June 12-15 for the HSCI co-sponsored 11th Annual Meeting of the International Society for Stem Cell Research (ISSCR). The program included a Presidential Address delivered by Shinya Yamanaka, MD, PhD, co-recipient of the 2012 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, for his discovery of induced pluripotent stem cells, as well as featured talks by HSCI faculty members, including Co-director Douglas Melton, PhD, who discussed making pancreatic beta cells, and Executive Committee member George Daley, MD, PhD, who gave a memorial lecture on generating blood-forming stem cells.

Institute co-hosts drug development summit

HSCI partnered with the Harvard Business School and the Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation to host a daylong summit on May 17 on “Advancing the Role of Non-Profit Organizations in Drug Development.” More than 50 people attended, including representatives from a variety of biopharmaceutical companies and non-profit organizations. Participants learned about various attempts to drive innovation and new models for funding drug development, including using prizes to bring in outside talent and choosing to make patentable discoveries freely available for others to study.

-JNC