Using DNA Sequencing in medicine: The world starts to figure out how

Seeking a set of best practices for safe, clinically useful genomic sequencing, Boston Children’s Hospital took a crowd-sourcing approach. In January, 2012, the hospital launched CLARITY, challenging research groups from around the world to interpret the genomes of three families with unexplained genetic diseases. Read more

First-ever drug trial reverses some signs of aging in progeria

A decade after the gene was discovered, Boston Children's researchers, led by Mark Kieran, MD, PhD, report encouraging clinical trials results for this early-aging disease using a drug first tested in cancer. The trial involved 28 families from 16 countries-about three quarters of the world's known cases at the time. Read more 

Building cyborg tissues: Bioengineering meets nanoelectronics

We're at the cusp of integrating miniaturized electronics and monitoring into engineered tissues and organs. Daniel Kohane, MD, PhD, a biomaterials researcher in Boston Children’s Hospital’s Anesthesia Department, with collaborators at Harvard and MIT, are building tissues with built-in feedback loops mimicking those the body naturally uses to monitor and control them. Read more