The brainchild of Albright, the symposium was intended to keep alumni connected to the excitement of research and learning taking place on the Quad. It was the first time all HMS alumni had been invited to learn about current research at their alma mater outside annual June Alumni Day events. Obstinacy Is the Best Policy Noted angiogenesis pioneer and HMS alum Judah Folkman, the Julia Dyckman Andrus professor of pediatric surgery at Children's Hospital, gave a talk that mixed a review of the latest developments in his field with reflections on his experience in research and medicine. The theory is that if one could develop targeted angiogenesis inhibitors, one might be able to prevent nascent tumors from developing their own blood supply and thus prevent growth of the tumor. Folkman's lab purified the first angiogenesis molecule and the first angiogenesis inhibitor.
Angiogenesis inhibitors are now in clinical trials in the U.S. and Europe.
CME began at the School in 1872 at the instigation of recent HMS graduates. Since then, it has grown in terms of courses, faculty, and alumni involved, and recently, in the use of the Internet to reach and teach alumni. Goldfinger highlighted the interactive nature and affordability of Web-based CME as very promising. Since I am learning how to be a physician at a time when genetics is both well-established and exploding in terms of possibilities for new treatments and early diagnoses, as well the attendant ethical quandaries, hearing Philip Leder, HMS '60, chair of the Department of Genetics, talk about how far genetics at Harvard has come since he created the department in 1980 was a lesson in how quickly the face of medicine can change when seminal discoveries are made and powerful technologies come of age. Leder, also the John Emory Andrus professor of genetics and director of the Harvard Institute of Human Genetics, discussed how some of the fruits of this research are influencing medicine today in the form of gene therapy and the merging of genetics and bioinformatics.