Health

HEALTH • Winter 2016 23 Fitchburg & Leominster Our Locations Urgent Care Fitchburg HealthAlliance Hospital - Burbank Campus 275 Nichols Road Fitchburg, MA 01420 ● 978-343-5072 Monday - Sunday: 9am to 6:30pm Urgent Care Leominster 510 North Main Street Leominster, MA 01453 ● 978-466-8820 Monday - Friday: 8am to 8pm Saturday & Sunday: 9am to 5pm UMass Memorial - HealthAlliance Hospital Urgent Care Centers provide convenient walk-in services for individuals of all ages. Our dedicated clinical teams provide exceptional care for everyone. • No appointments needed • Open weekends & extended hours • Lower cost compared to emergency room visits • Onsite Lab & Radiology (X-Ray) services • Most insurance plans accepted • Free Parking We treat non-life threatening illnesses and injuries such as: • Minor burns or injuries • Coughs, colds, and sore throats • Ear infections • Allergic reactions (non life-threatening) • Dehydration (Fitchburg location only) • Fever or flu-like symptoms Visit www.healthalliance.com or urgentcareleominster.com for more information. • Rash or other skin irritations • Sprains and strains • Broken bones • Mild asthma • Animal bites Take Charge Occupational Health Now Open at the Leominster location! New UMass Medical microscopes bring disease study closer to home U Mass Medical School is now home to two high-resolution cryo-electron [cryo-EM] microscopes, the first of their kind in New England. An $11 million invest- ment, the new Massachusetts Facility for High-resolution Electron Cryomicroscopy opened its doors in October 2016. The cutting-edge technology helps scientists understand fundamental biological questions about the causes of diseases, potentially leading to drug development for possible cures. With major technical advances in electron microscopy and electron detectors, cryo-EM has surpassed other technology as the superior experimen- tal technique for academic institutions and the biotechnology industry to obtain structural information. Dubbed the "research method of the year" by the journal Nature Methods, it provides atomic-level, structural information for biological systems based on high-resolution electron images. The technology is named for the sample preservation process; biological samples are typically preserved by rapid freezing and then observed in an electron microscope at liquid nitrogen temperature, called "cryo condition." This structural information is critical to understand how and why a biologi- cal system functions the way it does. The ability to see the structure and shape of important molecular struc- tures is important to drug developers. Most drug targets are actually embed- ded in cellular membranes, which have been difficult or impossible to visualize in great detail. The cellular machinery in cell divi- sion (and thus, cancers), the vast mix of structures that make up the immune system, and processes involved in viral infections, are all targets that can be studied using cryo-EM technology. For scientists, the cryo-electron microscopy is an increasingly impor- tant technique used in structural biol- ogy and other disciplines to study the relationships between structure and function in large molecular complexes within cells. Until now, the cryo-EM facility clos- est to the New England region was in New York City. Promoting biotech Our goal for the new Cryo-EM facil- ity at UMass Medical School is to pro- mote bioscience and biotech research in the region and nationally. Our vision is to build a complete pipeline from sample preparation to high-quality data collection to final computer data analy- sis. With scientists from other academic institutions and the pharmaceutical industry partnering with UMMS to use the technology, we are also training new users to master basic cryo-EM skills in order to optimize their research productivity. Chen Xu is a PhD associate professor of biochemistry and molecular biology, and core director of the Massachusetts Facility for High-resolution Electron Cryomicroscopy at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. HEALTHCARE INNOVATION By Chen Zu H "Our goal for the new Cryo-EM facility at UMass Medical School is to promote bioscience and biotech research in the region and nationally."

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