In the News

Krystle Kalafut’s journey intertwines her passion for fitness with her dedication to public health and molecular biology. Completing her PhD at Harvard Griffin Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, she delves into the intricate mechanisms of how cells respond to nutrients, aiming to bridge the gap between basic science and public health. Through her research on the mTORC1 signaling pathway in the liver, Kalafut uncovers insights into insulin regulation and potential implications for metabolic diseases like diabetes. With aspirations to apply her scientific expertise in academia or the pharmaceutical industry, she envisions her work translating into tangible improvements in health outcomes and accessibility to therapies.

Lockwood, a doctoral candidate in the Department of Molecular Metabolism at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, will graduate in May with a PhD in Biological Sciences in Public Health. As a student, she has sought to understand the biological mechanisms involved when cellular processes go wrong during disease. After graduation, she plans to join a consulting firm, where she will focus on creating strategies for how biotechnology companies can commercialize drugs and bring them to patients.

This program was developed to provide support for postdoctoral fellows (MD, MD/PhD and PhD) who specifically direct their research towards basic aging mechanisms and/or translational findings that have direct benefits to human aging and healthspan.

“Dr. Cissé aims to define the functional importance of nutrient sensing within the tumor microenvironment. How cells sense and adapt to the availability of nutrients in their environment is incompletely understood, but one key pathway is the signaling system anchored by the mTORC1 kinase. The mTORC1 kinase regulates cell growth and metabolism in response to nutrients such as amino acids and glucose. Aberrant mTORC1 signaling is implicated in several cancers, including melanoma, known to be heavily influenced by factors in the microenvironment such as nutrient availability. Dr. Cissé aims to understand how tumor metabolism senses and responds to varying nutrient levels, which will be essential for developing novel therapeutic targets.” Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation – Meet Our Scientists

Meghan earned this award due to the remarkable and novel discovery shared in her dissertation research, much of which was published earlier this Spring in the journal eLife, that a gene regulatory factor is known to be involved in adaptation to cellular stress also plays a previously unknown, independent function in promoting cell growth by altering amino acid metabolism, which has important implications in our understanding of the metabolic properties of growing tumors.

“The digital event, hosted under the library’s Youth Outreach initiative and intended primarily for Boston-area teenagers, covered everything from the nuts and bolts of pursuing a PhD to the sense of bliss that comes with making a discovery.”

In a new Science paper, Brendan Manning, professor of genetics and complex diseases, and colleagues reveal how a previously understudied enzyme may help fuel the metabolism of cancer cells and contribute to the development of other diseases, including diabetes and obesity.

Two faculty members from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health—Xihong Lin and Brendan Manning—will receive the prestigious National Cancer Institute Outstanding Investigator Awards (OIA). These multimillion-dollar seven-year awards, providing extended funding stability, are aimed at giving promising and productive investigators enough time and money to continue or embark on projects of unusual potential in cancer research—and to take greater risks in their work.

Findings by Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health’s Brendan Manning, professor of genetics and complex diseases, are providing new insights into tuberous sclerosis complex (TSC) — a rare genetic disease that causes the widespread growth of benign tumors — and may ultimately lead to treatment. His work characterizes the molecular mechanisms involved with the functional loss in one of two genes that ultimately leads to TSC tumors.

Dr. Manning’s research focuses on signaling and metabolic control under physiological and pathophysiological conditions. As a postdoc in Lewis Cantley’s lab, he found that TSC2 links the PI3K and mTOR pathways, connecting a primary growth factor pathway activated in cancers (PI3K) to the nutrient-sensing kinase mTOR. He aims to define control mechanisms of a signaling network implicated in genetic tumor syndromes, cancers, metabolic diseases like diabetes and cardiovascular disease, and neurocognitive/neurodegenerative diseases. Since discovering this regulatory hub’s role, he has contributed greatly to understanding how mTOR controls anabolic processes. His findings provide mechanisms and potential therapies for diseases like cancer and diabetes. Dr. Manning plans to expand this research to aging and autism spectrum disorders, where this network is also implicated.

A new study by Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health researcher is the first to identify the primary mechanism controlling a metabolic process essential for cell growth and proliferation. This pathway is centered around the mTOR protein, which relays growth signals to cells in response to external stimuli, including insulin and nutrients. The scientists speculate that one day researchers may be able to use this new knowledge to develop treatments for certain cancers which have uncontrolled mTOR signaling. The study appeared online in the February 21, 2013 issue of Science Express.

Brendan D. Manning, associate professor of genetics and complex diseases at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, was honored to receive the inaugural Armen H. Tashjian Jr. Award for Excellence in Endocrine Research. The award was established by Tashjian’s family and friends to honor his legacy and assist young faculty and fellows in pursuing innovative endocrine research. As the founding chair of the Department of Molecular and Cellular Toxicology (now the Department of Molecular Metabolism), Tashjian was a pioneer in demonstrating the importance of understanding the molecular mechanisms of toxicity and made seminal contributions to the fields of endocrinology and hormone action over his nearly three decades of leadership at the School.