School of medicine

School Notes: School of Medicine
March/April 2014

Nancy J. Brown | http://medicine.yale.edu

Genetics professor honored for work on hypertension

Richard P. Lifton, Sterling Professor of Genetics and chair of the Department of Genetics, has received a $3 million Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences, created by top Silicon Valley entrepreneurs. Lifton was one of eight scientists honored December 12 at gala ceremonies hosted by actor Kevin Spacey in Mountain View, California. Celebrities handed out awards to six winners of the life sciences prizes and two cowinners of the prize in physics. Lifton, who is also an investigator for the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, was recognized for his pioneering work to identify the genetic and biochemical underpinnings of hypertension, a disease that affects more than 1 billion people worldwide and that contributes to 17 million deaths annually from heart attack and stroke. Lifton and his colleagues identified patients around the world with exceptionally high or low blood pressure due to single gene mutations. They identified the mutated genes and established their role in salt reabsorption by the kidney and regulation of blood pressure. The work gave scientific rationale to limit dietary salt intake and suggested rational combinations of antihypertensive medications and development of new therapies.

Yale Medicine launches new design, iPad app

With its winter 2014 issue, Yale Medicine, the magazine of Yale School of Medicine, has reinvented itself as an interactive news and information source dedicated to emerging stories in medicine and biomedical science for a wide readership. The redesigned magazine was published in February, accompanied by an expanded website and an iPad app that includes video and additional content. Yale Medicine will devote each issue to an in-depth exploration of a single theme in science and medicine, with feature articles, interviews, photographs, commentary, historical material, and multimedia shedding light on the subject from different perspectives. The inaugural issue examines the quickly expanding field of bioimaging. Advances in imaging technology over the last several decades have enabled an ever more detailed view of the internal structures of organisms as well as their functions, from the level of molecules and cells to that of tissues, organs, and body. The issue explores the history of biomedical imaging and examines how scientists at Yale are developing new ways of seeing smaller and smaller structures.

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