Dateline DFCI
Institute welcomes new senior researchers
Harald von Boehmer, M.D., Ph.D.
The two newest members of Dana-Farber's senior research faculty combine laboratory expertise with a broader interest in developing new therapies for patients.
Harald von Boehmer, M.D., Ph.D., who joined the Institute in October, is exploring how the immune system's T cells develop and how they "remember" infectious agents they've already encountered. He and his colleagues have discovered a receptor on immature T cells that is required for proper development. This receptor may make it possible to identify T cell "precursors" that will lead to faster recovery of the immune system after bone marrow transplantation.
Educated in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, von Boehmer comes to Dana-Farber and Harvard from Descartes University in Paris, where he was a professor of immunology at the Hospital Necker Enfantes Malades and director of a research unit at the National Institute of Science and Medical Research.
Yoshihiro Nakatani, Ph.D.
Yoshihiro Nakatani, Ph.D., joined the Institute in December after a 15-year career at the National Institutes of Health. His most recent position there was section chief of the Laboratory of Molecular Growth Regulation at the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.
Nakatani's research focuses on proteins known as tumor suppressors because of their ability to inhibit the growth of tumor cells. Such proteins are produced by normal cells, but are either not produced or produced in abnormal forms by tumor cells. His laboratory seeks to understand precisely how tumor suppressors restrain cell growth.
Both von Boehmer and Nakatani say they were attracted to Dana-Farber by the Institute's reputation for "translational research" — using laboratory advances to benefit patients.
