Fourth-year MD student and aspiring radiologist Kristine Specht has been shaped by tutoring experiences at HMS.

Arsani William, a second-year MD student at HMS, reflects on the power of community.

The Harvard Medical School Center for Primary Care focuses on four program areas: education, innovation, community building and leadership development.

An internal medicine intern at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Sherman Jia is also concertmaster of the Longwood Symphony Orchestra.

Preview the Autumn 2012 issue of Harvard Medicine magazine

Renan Escalante, a graduate student in the Systems Biology PhD Program, shares his perspective.

Members of the HMS community devote their careers to improving lives locally, nationally and globally through teaching, research, patient care and advocacy. Learn about some of their recent achievements and plans for the future.

Surprising insights into how molecules move in and out of cells

Gut bacteria’s key role in immunity is tuned to the host species

Gary Strangman, assistant professor of psychology at HMS and director of the Neural Systems Group at Massachusetts General Hospital, is developing a portable brain scanner for use on earth and in space. For more information about Strangman and stories about space-related research, visit hms.harvard.edu/harvard-medicine and view the Spring 2012 "Space Savers" issue.

Ready, Willing and Perhaps Able: Predicting when astronauts will be alert

The Spring 2012 issue of Harvard Medicine magazine explores space-related research by faculty members. Stories are available at hms.harvard.edu/harvard-medicine.

Eric Chivian's orchard is a labor of love—and a testament to biodiversity. Chivian is an assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and a member of the school's Class of 1968. A story on his orchard, as well as a buffet of articles about food and medicine, can be found in the Winter 2012 issue of Harvard Medicine, the alumni and research magazine of Harvard Medical School.

Coren Apicella, a research fellow in the Christakis lab at Harvard Medical School, spent the summer of 2010 traveling around the remote Lake Eyasi region of Tanzania with the Hadza, one of the last remaining populations of hunter-gatherers on the planet. Their lives offer a window into our past—and clues about the evolution of cooperation. Within the Hadza community, cooperators cluster together, preventing self-interested individuals from destroying the social fabric. What's more, the...

Take a tour of a farmer's market with Michelle Hauser. Hauser, a member of the Harvard Medical School Class of 2011, is a clinical fellow in medicine at HMS and a resident physician at Cambridge Health Alliance. She is also certified in culinary arts by Le Cordon Bleu. A biography of Hauser, as well as a buffet of articles about food and medicine, can be found in the Winter 2012 issue of Harvard Medicine, the alumni and research magazine of Harvard Medical School.

The story of the proteasome inhibitor bortezomib, or Velcade, ended happily, if not where anyone expected, when a collaborative effort to reverse muscle wasting led to the discovery of a lifesaving drug for multiple myeloma.

A team led by Joan Brugge, the Louise Foote Pfeiffer Professor of Cell Biology at Harvard Medical School, recently shed light on how ovarian cancer spreads. In a paper published in June 2011 in the journal Cancer Discovery, Brugge and colleagues found that ovarian cancer cells act like bullies, using brute force to plow their way through tissue and colonize additional organs.

Professor of Cell Biology Spyros Artavanis-Tsakonas and colleagues have built a map that shows how thousands of proteins in a fruit fly cell communicate with each other. This is the largest and most detailed protein interaction map of a multicellular organism, demonstrating how approximately one third of the proteins cooperate to keep life going. Understanding how proteins communicate and interact with each other is key to understanding disease.

Professor Dennis Selkoe and colleagues have found that the structure of a protein that forms dangerous clumps in the brains of patients with Parkinson's is vastly different than originally thought. This discovery opens the door to a new therapeutic approach.

Assistant Professor of Neurobiology Chenghua Gu and colleagues have discovered how two particular proteins help modulate the formation of new blood vessel networks, a process called angiogenesis. The findings could make it possible to improve upon existing therapies that block angiogenesis in cancer patients, whose tumors require oxygen and nutrients from blood in order to grow. The study also has implications for treating macular degeneration and diabetic retinopathy, both of which are...

Scientists can finally look at circuits in the brain in all of their complexity. How the mind works is one of the greatest mysteries in nature, and this research presents a new and powerful way for us to explore that mystery.

Researchers at Harvard’s Wyss Institute have combined microfabrication techniques from the computer industry with modern tissue engineering techniques, human cells and a plain old vacuum pump to create a living, breathing human lung-on-a-chip. The device mimics the most active part of the lung, the boundary between the air sac and the blood stream.

How does one measure mastery in both the art and the science of medicine? Harvard Medical School relies, in part, on the Objective Structured Clinical Exam (OSCE), which features actors playing patients. All Harvard Medical students take two OSCEs—one at the end of their second year and one at the beginning of their fourth year.