Mass. scientists score most early-career Howard Hughes appointments

Massachusetts ranks first in the number of early-career scientists to win prestigious grants in a national program designed to encourage innovation when research dollars are scarce.

Ten researchers -- from Harvard, Massachusetts General Hospital, MIT, and University of Massachusetts Medical School -- are among 50 scientists who have won six-year appointments to the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. California ranked second, with eight winners.

The $200 million Early Career Scientist program pays the salaries of the scientists and gives them each $1.5 million to fund their research.

The program was created last year to help scientists establish their own research programs amid a tighter funding climate that was harsh for people at the start of their independent careers. Candidates must have led their own laboratories for two to six years. A total of 2,000 applicants sought the appointments, which support the scientists at their home institutions.

The Massachusetts scientists and their research interests are:

Bradley E. Bernstein of Mass. General has developed new research tools to explore proteins that package DNA, focusing on how chromatin helps stem cells decide when to commit to developing into a particular cell type.

Kevin Eggan of Harvard University is working with stem cells -- both cells derived from human embryonic stem cells and induced pluripotent cells gained from skin cells -- to study how diseases such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS, begin and progress.

Marc R. Freeman of UMass Medical School is studying the fruit fly to understand how the glial cells that support and protect neurons are involved in the way injured neurons behave, which could help design therapies for spinal and nerve injury as well as neurodegenerative disease.

Konrad Hochedlinger of Mass. General is studying safer and more efficient ways to genetically reprogram cells, including a method that uses a harmless virus that disappears after delivering genes that force cells into an early state from which they develop into other kinds of cells.

Michael T. Laub of MIT is analyzing the complete set of genes and proteins involved in cell cycle progression and other signaling pathways to better understand how cells process information and control behavior.

Peter W. Reddien of the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research at MIT is studying regeneration in flatworms, using RNA interference screening and genomic bioinformatics to see how the organism's genes -- some similar to human genes -- prompt it to regrow just one head or a tail after one has been lost.

Aviv Regev of MIT and the Broad Institute at Harvard and MIT is studying how complex gene regulation networks respond to genetic and environmental changes, with an interest in cancer cells and the relationship between the malaria parasite and its human host.

Christopher M. Sassetti of UMass Medical School is investigating how tuberculosis bacteria keep themselves alive inside immune cells in the lungs, sometimes for years, so that more effective treatments might be found.

Amy J. Wagers of Harvard Medical School and the Joslin Diabetes Center, who became interested in stem cell biology after volunteering to donate bone marrow for a transplant, is studying blood-forming and muscle-forming stem cells to see if defects in aging stem cells may be reversible.

Rachel I. Wilson of Harvard Medical School is using a technique to measure electrical activity of individual neurons in fruit fly brains to understand how the brain processes information about odors and other sensory stimuli.