U.S. Sen. Edward Markey visited UMass Medical School on Tuesday, Aug. 14, spending time in a research lab and meeting with Chancellor Michael F. Collins; Terence R. Flotte, MD, the Celia and Isaac Haidak Professor of Medical Education, executive deputy chancellor, provost and dean of the School of Medicine; and leaders from UMass Memorial Health Care.
In his remarks, Chancellor Collins noted that Sen. Markey’s devotion to the support of the National Institutes of Health has proven to be crucial to the advancement of research and scientific discovery at the medical school.
“Research is medicine’s field of dreams,” said Markey. “It gives hope to families that there will be cures for Alzheimer’s, ALS and other diseases. NIH doesn’t just mean the National Institutes of Health, it also means the National Institutes of Hope, and the hope is that here, at UMass, breakthroughs will be made on these critical diseases.”
Markey took a tour of a lab in the RNA Therapeutics Institute, where he spoke with Anastasia Khvorova, PhD, professor of RNA therapeutics, and Nobel Laureate Craig Mello, PhD, Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator, the Blais University Chair in Molecular Medicine and distinguished professor of RNA therapeutics and molecular medicine.
