Massachusetts General Hospital

Pathology Research Overview

The Division of Research, led by J. Keith Joung, MD, PhD, Associate Chief of Pathology, Research, encompasses research by Pathology Service faculty that is divided among a number of different laboratories and departments. Peer-review funded investigators are centered in the Molecular Pathology Unit (Drs. David Louis, Keith Joung, Atul Bhan, Kevin Haigis, David Langenau, Atsushi Mizoguchi, Cathy Nutt, Miguel Rivera, Eveline Schneeberger, Dennis Sgroi and Anat Stemmer-Rachamimov).

Additional departmental investigators are located in the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (Dr. Bradley Bernstein), the Experimental Pathology Unit (Drs. Frederic Preffer and James Stone), the Immunopathology Research (Drs. Robert Colvin and Rex Neal Smith), the Translational Oncology Laboratory (Drs. John Iafrate and Dora Dias-Santagata) and Pathology Informatics and Imaging Research Unit (Drs. John Gilbertson, Yukako Yagi, Anand Dighe, Thomas Gudewicz, James Michaelson and David Wilbur).

Multiple Pathology faculty have funded laboratory research efforts that occupy space in other departments:

• Matthew P. Frosch, MD, PhD - Neurology
• Jeannie Lee, MD, PhD - Molecular Biology and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute
• Gary Tearney, MD, PhD - Dermatology and Wellman Photomedicine
• John Higgins, MD - Center for Systems Biology
• Drucilla Roberts, MD - Pediatric Surgery
• Lawrence Zukerberg, MD - Vincent Gynecology
• Chin-Lee Wu, MD, PhD - Urology
• Leo Cheng, PhD - Radiology

Two HMS Pathology faculty have their laboratories in the MGH Cancer Center (Drs. Andi McClatchey and Lee Zou). In addition, most Pathology Service staff are involved in diverse clinicopathological research activities.

Pathology Research activities occupy approximately 20,000 square feet within Pathology, with Pathology researchers receiving approximately $8 million in direct costs of annual research support. Research activities have been expanded greatly over the past five years, including: creation of the Division; recruitment of eight basic scientists at the Assistant Professor level and one at the Instructor level (with six as full members of the Center for Cancer Research, two as members of the Harvard-MIT Broad Institute and four as members of the Harvard Medical School Biological and Biomedical Sciences program), as well as a veterinary pathologist (with the Center for Comparative Medicine) and two molecular diagnostic pathologists; acquisition of considerable additional Pathology research space that has been extensively renovated; expansion in the number of Harvard and MIT PhD -candidate graduate students training in MGH Pathology laboratories; and provision of competitive pilot grants to junior clinical faculty. During this time, the group has seen an extraordinary increase in the amount of NIH funding.

The Division of Research works with all Units of the Pathology Service to foster its research mission. Activities include a popular, weekly pan-departmental Molecular Pathology and Research (MPR) conference, development of a molecular pathology rotation for Pathology residents, a pathology research mentoring program for residents, and an NIH Training Grant that supports seven fellows per year. The Division oversees a number of core facilities that offer services including expert subspecialty pathologist consultation, histology, immunohistochemistry, image acquisition/analysis, tissue microarray, laser capture microdissection, RNA in situ hybridization, FISH, array comparative genomic hybridization, and other tissue-based techniques. The Division has also participated in an Affymetrix microarray facility at the adjacent MGH Cancer Center.

Plans for the near future include recruitment of additional basic science principal investigators, development of new research space, and continued growth of the Translational Oncology Laboratory.

Updated 10/14/2011
Navigation 12/13/2011