Pathology Research

Pathology Research Overview

The Division of Research, led by David Langenau, PhD, is divided among a number of different laboratories and departments. Peer-review funded investigators are centered in the Molecular Pathology Unit (Drs. Martin Aryee, Atul Bhan, Lida Hariri, John Iafrate, David Langenau, David Louis, Luca Pinello, Miguel Rivera, Dennis Sgroi, Anat Stemmer-Rachamimov and Mario L. Suvà).

Additional departmental investigators are located in the Experimental Pathology Unit (Drs. Frederic Preffer and James Stone), the Immunopathology Research (Drs. Robert Colvin and Rex Neal Smith), the Center for Integrated Diagnostics (Drs. Long Phi Le, Jochen Lennerz and Dora Dias-Santagata, PhD) and Pathology Informatics and Imaging Research Unit (Drs. Anand Dighe, Markus Herrmann, and Jochen Lennerz).

Multiple Pathology faculty have funded laboratory facilities and research efforts conducted in collaboration with other departments:

• Leo L. Cheng, PhD Radiology
• Matthew P. Frosch, MD, PhD Mass General Institute for Neurodegenerative Diseases
• Gad A. Getz, PhD Krantz Family Center for Cancer Research, Pathology Service
• John Higgins, MD Center for Systems Biology
• Mike Lawrence, PhD Krantz Family Center for Cancer Research
• Andrea I. McClatchey, PhD Krantz Family Center for Cancer Research
• Eric Rosenberg, MD Infectious Disease
• Chin-Lee Wu, MD, PhD Urology-Pathology Research Laboratory
• Omer Yilmaz, MD, PhD MIT

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 over $19 million in direct costs of annual research support. Research activities have been expanded greatly over the past several years, including: recruitment of ten basic scientists at the Assistant Professor level (many are also members of the Krantz Family Center for Cancer Research, the Harvard-MIT Broad Institute and four as members of the Harvard Medical School Biological and Biomedical Sciences program); 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 Mass General 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. Plans for the near future include recruitment of additional basic science principal investigators, and development of new research space.