School Notes: School of Medicine
November/December 2022

Yale creates center devoted to brain and mind health

Yale School of Medicine has announced the creation of the Yale Center for Brain and Mind Health (CBMH) to promote interdisciplinary clinical and translational research on conditions that affect the mind and brain. The center will foster transformational work that bridges existing departments, levels of analysis, and disciplinary boundaries, and will focus on areas of clinical and translational neuroscience that are broader than any single disease. It will bring together existing expertise within Yale and the hospital community and will recruit new faculty in research areas that build on Yale’s strengths. It also will seek to enhance research collaboration between the School of Medicine and allied partner health care systems, including the Yale New Haven Health System, the VA Connecticut Healthcare System, and the Connecticut Mental Health Center. The strength of these organizations will provide a synergistic opportunity for improving patient care.

Yale-developed technology restores cell, organ function in pigs after death

In a study that the investigators say may help extend the health of human organs during surgery and expand availability of donor organs, a Yale team restored blood circulation and other cellular functions in pigs a full hour after their deaths. The researchers used a new technology that they developed to deliver a specially designed cell-protective fluid to organs and tissues. 

“All cells do not die immediately; there is a more protracted series of events,” said David Andrijevic, associate research scientist in neuroscience at Yale School of Medicine and co–lead author of the study. “It is a process in which you can intervene, stop, and restore some cellular function.”

The OrganEx technology might eventually have several applications, the authors said. In addition to extending the viability of organs during surgery and transplantation, it might also be able to help treat organs or tissue damaged by ischemia during heart attacks or strokes.