(Pictured above from top left are Susan A. Slaugenhaupt, PhD, Scientific Director of the Mass General Research Institute, Eric Liao, MD, PhD, and Dara Manoach, PhD.)
The fourth annual LAB DAY offered friends and supporters of the Mass General Research Institute a behind-the-scenes look at the hospital’s vast research enterprise and a chance to hear firsthand from investigators tackling some of the toughest challenges in science and medicine. Watch the full video.
Susan A. Slaugenhaupt, PhD, Scientific Director of the Mass General Research Institute and Elizabeth G. Riley and Daniel E. Smith, Jr. Endowed MGH Research Institute Chair, kicked off the virtual event by welcoming attendees and thanking them for their support. “We’re really grateful that you take the time to be with us, because your giving has such an incredible impact on what we are able to do at Mass General.”
In the first video tour, Eric Liao, MD, PhD, Laurie and Mason Tenaglia MGH Research Scholar 2018-2023, discussed his research using zebrafish models to understand the genetic and environmental factors behind cleft palate. Watch tour.
In the second tour, Dara Manoach, PhD, Paul B. and Sandra M. Edgerley MGH Research Scholar 2019-2024, shared her research looking at the relationship between abnormal sleep and the cognitive deficits experienced by individuals with neurodevelopmental disorders such as schizophrenia, as well as the strategies she’s using to devise new treatments. Watch tour.
Research in the Age of COVID
(In the top row, from left, are Mason Tenaglia, member of the Mass General Research Institute Advisory Council and moderator of the Research in the Age of COVID panel discussion, Travis Baggett, MD, MPH, and Daphne Holt, MD, PhD, In the bottom row, from left, are Ingrid Bassett, MD, MPH, and Olivia Okereke, MD, MS.)
LAB DAY continued with “Research in the Age of COVID,” a panel discussion and Q&A session with four MGH Research Scholars who work in the fields of community health, infectious diseases, psychiatry and aging. The discussion was moderated by Mass General Research Institute Advisory Council member Mason Tenaglia.
“First, and I think most importantly, this epidemic, this pandemic, showed us that people experiencing homelessness, once again, are a bellwether population for the health of society at large,” said Travis Baggett, MD, MPH, MGH Research Scholar 2021-2026. “We saw this with the AIDS epidemic in the late ’80s and early ’90s, and we’ve seen it with the opioid epidemic over the past decade or so.
“In each of these instances, homeless individuals not only bear a disproportionate burden of public health crises, but they also shine a light on the hidden and sometimes not so hidden cracks in our healthcare system,” Baggett said. “In doing so, they forecast issues that are going to eventually affect everyone.”
Ingrid Bassett, MD, MPH, Weissman Family MGH Research Scholar 2018-2023, discussed an unprecedented collaborative effort among Boston hospitals–including Mass General, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Beth Israel Lahey, Boston Medical Center, Tufts Medical Center and the Cambridge Health Alliance–to learn more about the long term symptoms of COVID (long COVID) experienced by some individuals after their initial infection has cleared.
Daphne Holt, MD, PhD, MGH Research Scholar 2018-2023, said her research has shown that individuals’ perception of personal space has increased significantly since the start of the pandemic, with healthy study participants preferring to stand further away from others in both real life settings and digital simulations.
“We’ve also been using these results to develop a virtual reality-based treatment program that will help people overcome their fears and their discomfort with being physically close to other people and address other aspects of this psychological effects of the pandemic,” Holt said.
Olivia Okereke, MD, MS, Terry and Jean de Gunzburg MGH Research Scholar 2021-2026, told panelists her involvement in several large-scale clinical trials for risk factors and prevention of late-life depression allowed her to quickly add new questions to these studies to capture information about the cognitive symptoms of long COVID as well.
The Power of Philanthropy
A key message of the day was the crucial role of philanthropic funding in helping investigators respond to the challenges of COVID-19—both in terms of continuing their existing research programs and addressing new questions posed by the pandemic.
Scientists in the MGH Research Scholars program are provided with $500,000 in unrestricted funding ($100,000 per year for five years) to support them in pursuing new avenues of research that may be too early or unproven for traditional funding.
“The MGH Research Scholar award is really a transformative opportunity for investigators such as myself to ask really daring questions,” said Liao. “It’s been a tremendous benefit to my lab.”
“Having a mechanism that supports the investigator and trusts them to make decisions about changing the scope of their work is really helpful,” added Bassett.
It was a message echoed by Harry W. Orf, PhD, senior vice president for research, in his closing remarks.
“What you learned about today—preventing and predicting cleft palate, wearing technology to treat severe mental illness, COVID research focused across different disease areas—I can tell you that none of that work is done alone,” Orf said.
“We do this work with the support of our visionary philanthropists who fuel the life-saving discoveries that are underway at the Research Institute.”
About the Mass General Research Institute
Massachusetts General Hospital is home to the largest hospital-based research program in the United States. Our researchers work side-by-side with physicians to develop innovative new ways to diagnose, treat and prevent disease.
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