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For further information, contact the MBL Communications Office at (508) 289-7423 or e-mail us at comm@mbl.edu
For Immediate Release: October 14, 2010
Contact: Gina Hebert, 508-289-7725; ghebert@mbl.edu
West Falmouth Library Hosts Talk About New MBL Regenerative Biology Center
WOODS HOLE, MA—It's a power that is widely found in the animal kingdom. If a starfish loses and arm, it can grow another. If a zebrafish heart sustains damage it doesn't scar the way a human heart does: it regrows healthy new heart muscle. If so many animals can regenerate lost limbs, nerves, organs, even a whole body, why can't human beings?
Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) Director and CEO Dr. Gary Borisy will offer a presentation addressing this question titled “It's Back! Regenerative Biology and Medicine at the MBL,” at the West Falmouth Library, 575 West Falmouth Highway, on Thursday, October 21 at 7:00 PM. The event, sponsored by the West Falmouth Library and the MBL Associates, is free and open to the public.
Marine organisms, a continued focus of studies at the MBL, hold great promise as research models for this work and for advancing human health, particularly now that it is possible to decode their genomes. With this in mind, the MBL's new Eugene Bell Center for Regenerative Biology and Tissue Engineering is rapidly taking shape. The Center, established through gifts from Millicent Bell, and MBL board chair John W. Rowe and his wife Valerie Rowe, is a high-impact, multidisciplinary, and unique research initiative that draws upon the special advantages of marine invertebrates and other cornerstone organisms to define and understand the natural processes by which damaged or aging tissues and organs can regenerate or be repaired, and to apply that knowledge to the development of medical therapies.
For more information about the talk, contact the MBL Communications Office, 508-274-7423 or the West Falmouth Library, 508-548-4709.
The MBL is a leading international, independent, nonprofit institution dedicated to discovery and to improving the human condition through creative research and education in the biological, biomedical and environmental sciences. Founded in 1888 as the Marine Biological Laboratory, the MBL is the oldest private marine laboratory in the Americas.
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