News

Whitehead Institute researchers have shown definitively that mutations associated with prion diseases are sufficient to cause a transmissible neurodegenerative disease. Deciphering the origins of prion diseases could help farmers and policy-makers determine how best to control a prion disease outbreak in livestock and to prevent prion transmission to humans.

Whitehead Institute, along with the greater scientific research community, lost a great advocate and friend with the passing of Senator Edward M. Kennedy late Tuesday night. 

The tail ends of cellular protein templates, regions often thought relatively inconsequential, may actually play a role in preventing normal cells from becoming cancerous.

Newly appointed National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins said Monday he has contemplated the NIH’s piloting a program for exceptional young investigators modeled after Whitehead Institute’s Fellows program.

A multi-institutional team of Boston-area researchers has discovered a chemical that works in mice to kill the rare but aggressive cells within breast cancers that have the ability to seed new tumors.

A novel technique allows researchers to efficiently and precisely modify or introduce genes into the genomes of human embryonic stem cells (ESCs) and induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells, according to Whitehead scientists.

Whitehead Institute scientists have developed a rapid, inexpensive drug-screening method that could be used to target diseases that until now have stymied drug developers, such as Parkinson’s disease.  This technique uses baker’s yeast to synthesize and screen the molecules, cutting target discovery and preliminary testing time to a matter of weeks.

Whitehead Fellow Kate Rubins is among nine men and women selected by NASA for the 2009 astronaut candidate class.

Low levels of a tiny RNA fragment in cells are associated with metastatic breast cancer in humans and increases the aggressive spread of breast cancer in mice, according to researchers at Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research.

Researchers at Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research have identified a protein in multiple myeloma cells, called DEPTOR, that indirectly activates a signaling pathway commonly turned on in cancer cells. Known as the PI3K/PTEN/Akt pathway, this signaling pathway controls cell survival, and when altered, keeps cancer cells from dying.