BBC calls Mass. healthcare initiative is 'brave'

Excerpts from the Globe's blog on the Boston-area medical community.

In a report on the state's new law requiring near-universal health coverage, the BBC asks if Massachusetts can serve as a model for the nation, which lags behind poorer countries in some health measures despite its wealth.

"It is a brave attempt to address gaps in US healthcare without trampling on a core US value: freedom of choice," says the British story, which includes interviews with Massachusetts General Hospital's Dr. David Torchiana, former Health Care For All chief John McDonough, Commonwealth Connector head Jon Kingsdale, and Roxbury minister Reverend Hurmon Hamilton.

"Its survival is very dependent on political will," the story concludes.

ELIZABETH COONEY

Researchers at the Whitehead Institute in Cambridge have developed a more efficient technique to reprogram adult cells into an embryonic-stem-cell-like state.

The method, described in a paper published online in the journal Nature Biotechnology, allows researchers to use a drug to induce large numbers of different kinds of cells to act like embryonic stem cells, capable of developing into nerves, bones, blood, or other kinds of cells. Instead of the inefficient and unpredictable process of infecting cells with viruses to reprogram them, scientists can cull cells from specially-bred mice and treat them with a drug to induce the change.

That step forward should allow scientists to study how the reprogramming process works. It could also facilitate research aimed at finding a substitute for the cancer-causing viruses currently used to reprogram cells, overcoming a significant safety barrier to using such cells as a potential therapy.

CAROLYN Y. JOHNSON

Researchers from Northeastern University and Massachusetts General Hospital are studying ways to predict which women with benign breast disease are at high risk of developing breast cancer.

Funded by a three-year, $1.3 million grant from the advocacy group Susan G. Komen for the Cure, Barry Karger of Northeastern and Dr. Dennis Sgroi of Mass. General hope to identify proteins that can be used to decide who would benefit from close monitoring or preventive measures.

ELIZABETH COONEY