“It’s really cool, because you can do some high risk, high reward types of study” with this new center, said Chenghua Gu, a Harvard neurobiology professor whose research will be supported in the new initiative. “And you’ll have a network you can collaborate with.”
Gu studies the blood-brain barrier, a layer of tightly-woven cells that blocks bacteria and other harmful substances from reaching the brain and spinal cord but allows in essential nutrients. This barrier has stymied scientists in developing drugs that can readily pass through to deliver treatments for tumors and degenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s.
Gu’s lab pinpointed a molecule involved in the barrier’s locking process and is searching for more. Scientists hope to design drugs that target those molecules so the barrier could be selectively opened to let in life-saving treatments.
Gu’s team also is searching for ways to tighten the barrier in cases where it becomes leaky and allows toxins to seep in, such as in degenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s.
Planning for the $30 million gift from Yang began before the Trump administration’s months-long fight with Harvard but comes at a fortuitous time, said David Ginty,chair of neurobiology at Harvard and the new center’s co-director.
“It’s going to help support research that might have been terminated because of the loss of federal support, but that wasn’t the purpose for the gift,” Ginty said.
The Trump administration earlier this year cancelled nearly $3 billion in federal research funding to Harvard as part of its campaign to curb liberal bias and antisemitism. A federal judge this month ruled Trump’s action was illegal, but researchers have yet to see their money return.
Yang’s gift brings to $64 million the total amount she has donated to Harvard, including a $34 milliongift in 2019 to establish a research center for autism, a deep interest of the former Wall Street investment banker who has two children with the condition.
Yang said in a statement that she funded the centers at Harvard and MIT to foster collaboration but also to nurture young scientists. Her gift provides support for postdoctoral researchers to work in the area of brain-body physiology. The research fellows, she said, “will be among the best and brightest bulbs in their respective fields.”
Ginty, the new center’s co-director, is researching how the brain processes touch, heat, and pain through the skin, bones, teeth, bladder and genitals. He focuses on nerve cells, called neurons, and how they transmit pain and other sensations in the body.
“Every neuron tells a story,” Ginty said.
His lab investigates how this neuron network goes awry in various diseases and disorders, such as autism, in which many people with the disorder are hypersensitive to touch. Ginty is also focused on chronic pain, such as the burning and tingling in the feet, legs, and arms that can plague people with diabetic neuropathy, and how the body senses and communicates these sensations to the brain.
“Pain is a tremendous societal challenge now because of the problems we’re in with the opioid epidemic,” Ginty added. “But we have the tools now to understand these [neural] pathways.”
Ginty hopes to use his findings to develop new treatments for altering such problematic nerve signals.
Another researcher in the center, Dragana Rogulja, associate professor of neurobiology, studies sleep, including why animals need sleep and what happens in the body without it.
Rogulja found that when sleep was restricted for fruit flies and for mice, they died prematurely. The scientists later found significant cellular damage in their gut.
A number of health problems, such as diabetes, heart disease, and a higher risk for cancer, have been linked to a lack of sleep
That got Rogulja thinking. Her team had studied metabolites, the substances produced when animals and people break down food. She saw in mice whose sleep was restricted an increase in the same metabolites as those that were elevated in mice with colon tumors.
“I keep hearing about this increase in colon cancer that’s over the last 20 years and why are young people getting it?” she said.
“Maybe it’s because that corresponds roughly to the timeline when everybody started having personal devices,” she said.
A number of studies have linked the use of cellphones, especially before bedtime, to sleep problems. Could the rise in cellphone use and the phenomenon’s related lack of sleep, be linked to the rise in colon cancer over that same time?
Rogulja‘s team is now studying the impact of sleep loss on colon cancer in mice and whether less sleep correlates with accelerated or more aggressive tumors.
“We are not saying that sleep loss is, by itself, sufficient to explain the incidence of colon cancer, just that it could be a contributor, in addition to other factors, such as processed foods and environmental pollutants,” she said.
Rogulja is among the scores of scientists whose grants were cut in the Trump administration’s legal battles with Harvard. She has not had to lay off any of her team but things are tight.
The Yang gift will not make up for all that was lost, she said, but it helps.
“It’s incredibly nice to have support from someone for practical reasons,” she said. “But it’s also that someone believes in the vision. That is definitely super helpful and could hardly be coming at a better time.”
Kay Lazar can be reached at kay.lazar@globe.com Follow her @GlobeKayLazar.
