Drs. Li-Huei Tsai and Junying Yuan, both of Harvard, are leading research teams on brain. Dr. Li-Huei Tsai is associate professor of pathology and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator. HMS dean Martin calls her "one of the most productive young woman in the country." Her lab found that cdk5, paired with a protein called P35, is needed to guide certain neurons to their proper places in the brain. Dr. Tsai's discovery could benefit millions of people with Alzheimer's disease.
Dr. Junying Yuan has studied genes that turn out to be key players in apoptosis, a genetically programmed process by which health cells commit suicide, rather than sliding slowly into senescence and death. Apoptosis is essential for normal development. The genes that Yuan has identified in past 15 years encode caspases, enzymes and that versatile actors in the drama of cell death. Yuan discovered that in ischemic stroke, cells die first in the area that is abruptly deprived of blood and then caspases seep into surrounding tissue and kill more and more brain cells. Yuan's team hopes to learn how necrosis works, and in the process, develop new ideas for treating stoke patients. (Patricia Thomas, "Braining women,"Harvard Magazine, May-June, 2002, pp. 36-43).