A Boston ophthalmologist has won a prestigious international prize for preventing blindness in diabetes patients.

Dr. Lloyd M. Aiello, a professor at Harvard Medical School and physician at Joslin Diabetes Center, will receive the 2008/2009 Warren Alpert Foundation Prize on Sept. 29, Harvard announced yesterday. The honor has been a precursor for seven Nobel Prizes.

The $200,000 award recognizes pioneering treatments Aiello developed in 1967 with his father-in-law, the late William P. Beetham, to halt a complication of diabetes that at the time led to vision loss in 95 percent of patients. In diabetes, weak blood vessels proliferate in the retina, causing hemorrhages that leave the patient blind.

Aiello and Beetham noticed that patients whose retinas had scarring from other conditions fared better than other patients with retinal bleeding, Harvard said. The doctors mimicked the scarring with laser treatments that are still used today, when the proportion of diabetic patients who lose their vision has fallen to 5 percent.

"We've come an incredible distance, but now we need to work toward preserving vision with a pill so that we can retire the lasers," Aiello said in a statement released by Harvard. "My son, Lloyd P. Aiello, is tackling this project, and I think he has a good chance of succeeding in 10 to 20 years."

People with type 1 diabetes who stick to a strict regimen to keep their blood sugar levels near normal can reduce their risk of serious complications, according to a large study that followed patients who had the disease for 30 years. The trial is the longest and largest to track such tight control since it became the standard of care in 1993.

In type 1 diabetes, which accounts for 5 to 10 percent of all diabetes, the body no longer makes insulin, the hormone that regulates blood sugar levels. Patients, who must inject insulin daily to stay alive, are more vulnerable than other people to kidney failure, vision loss, heart disease, and nerve damage that sometimes leads to amputation.

A landmark study that appeared in 1993 showed that closely monitoring blood sugar levels, injecting insulin at least three times a day, and carefully calibrating insulin doses to match diet and activity could substantially cut the risk of these serious conditions. Conventional therapy until then called for one or two insulin injections a day and a daily blood or urine test for blood sugar.

Dr. David M. Nathan, director of the Diabetes Center at Massachusetts General Hospital, said that study is widely viewed as the most important since the introduction of insulin. He is the lead author of the new study in today's Archives of Internal Medicine that builds on that work to show what modern therapies based on tight control mean for people with type 1 diabetes.

Boston hospitals made a strong showing in the newest US News & World Report rankings.

Massachusetts General Hospital and Brigham and Women's Hospital both scored high on the honor roll for hospitals with top scores in at least six of the 16 specialties rated. Mass. General was fifth and the Brigham was 10th on the 21-member list.

The rankings are based on patient outcomes, reputation, and care-related measures. Out of 4,861 hospitals in the country, 174 scored high enough to be included on the specialty lists.

Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center made the top 50 in eight specialties and Boston Medical Center was ranked in three.

Joslin Diabetes Center has opened a new center in Dubai.

The Joslin Diabetes Center Affiliate at the Dubai Health Authority, on the campus of Al Wasl Hospital, will treat adults with diabetes. A pediatric unit is planned. Dubai is part of the United Arab Emirates, which is experiencing an increase in type 2 diabetes related to growing obesity.

Joslin's other international center is in Canada.

Other Boston healthcare entities with a presence in the region include Partners Harvard Medical International and Boston University Institute of Dental Research and Education in Dubai and Tufts University's Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy in Ras al Khaimah, another of the United Arab Emirates.

Keeping a healthy weight means balancing how much food you take in with how much energy you put out. Eat too much and the excess is stored as fat. Exercise more and that fat melts away.

But what if fat itself could help burn calories?

New research reported in tomorrow's New England Journal of Medicine adds to growing knowledge about brown fat, the "good" fat that has been studied in mice for its connection to body weight and metabolism.

Babies are born with brown fat deposits that help keep them warm by burning calories instead of storing them, but scientists believed that brown fat disappeared or lay in dormant islands by adulthood. A team led by Dr. Aaron Cypess of the Joslin Diabetes Center has found that brown fat persists in adults and remains active. And in a correlation with potential implications for treating obesity, the researchers found that the more brown fat people had, the lower their body-mass index was, especially in older people.

"There really is a meaningful amount of brown fat in adult human beings and it is functional," Cypess said in an interview. While much remains to be learned, "this now is an entirely new approach to treating obesity."

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.

Boston-area research institutions tied with California universities to each win a dozen federal grants designed to foster innovative research at a time of tight funding.

Twelve of 47 winners announced today by the National Institutes of Health are scientists working at Harvard, MIT, and Harvard-affiliated hospitals in Boston. California also had 12 winners from Stanford, the University of California, and Cal Tech. Last year 16 of 41 winners were from Greater Boston and seven were from California.

Two Boston hospitals make US News & World Report's latest Best Hospitals rankings look a little like "Partners and Everyone Else," to borrow a phrase from former Globe business columnist Steve Bailey.

That's because Partners stalwarts Massachusetts General Hospital and Brigham and Women's Hospital are the only ones in the state to crack the magazine's 19-member Honor Roll. The distinction signifies hospitals that scored at or near the top in at least six of the list's 16 specialties. Pediatrics will have its own ranking in the fall.

Not that other hospitals didn't perform well. Our medical mecca's reputation is still intact with Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary, McLean Hospital, and Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital all finishing in the top 10 of various specialties.

By Kay Lazar, Globe Staff

Boston's three leading medical schools are among 14 nationwide that will receive federal grants aimed at helping scientists more quickly turn their discoveries into treatments for patients.

Under the program, Harvard Medical School has been awarded $117.7 million over the next five years, while Boston University Medical School will receive $23 million and Tufts University School of Medicine $20 million over that time period, the National Institutes of Health announced today.

The awards reflect a sea change in federal funding for scientific research. Schools that have traditionally competed within their own institutions for federal dollars must now form one collaborative center at each medical school to pull together all of its researchers and departments.

The mission of the grant program, called the Clinical and Translational Science Award, is to create a network of medical research institutions across the country that will translate new knowledge into tangible benefits for patients. Launched in 2006, the initiative has awarded money to 24 other medical schools. Total funding for the 14 new recipients will be $533 million over the next five years, the NIH said.

"Everybody knows there is a lot of great research going on but it doesn’t get to public practice," said Dr. Harry Selker, director of Tufts' new Clinical and Translational Science Institute. "This (grant program) is a big deal for the nation."

Joslin Diabetes Center has completed the sale of land in the Longwood Medical Area to developers who will build a research building in which Joslin and others will lease space, Joslin said today.

The parcel at the corner of Longwood and Brookline avenues was sold to a joint venture of Alexandria Real Estate Equities Inc., National Development and Charles River Realty Investors. They will build a 350,000-square-foot building on the 1.1-acre site. Joslin will expand its research program into part of the new building, the diabetes center said.

The developers were expected to pay more than $100 million for the site, two existing buildings and development rights, according to sources quoted in a Globe story in July. The project is a departure from an earlier plan proposed in 2001 that would have combined housing and other uses for the project.

Construction on the new building, with an estimated cost of $300 million, will begin in 2008.