Harrison Farber

Harrison (Hap) Farber is currently Professor of Medicine and Director of the Pulmonary Hypertension Center at Boston University.

He attended undergraduate at Duke University before moving to Belgium and became a member of the national Belgium cycling team. He then went on to attend medical school at George Washington University and entered into residency at the Medical College of Virginia. He completed a fellowship in Harvard Medical School/Beth Israel hospital.At present, Dr. Farber is a Professor in the Department of Medicine and attends in the Medical Intensive Care Unit and on the Pulmonary Consultation Service at Boston Medical Center. He also oversees the care of all patients with Pulmonary Hypertension at Boston Medical Center.

Dr. Farber’s research focuses on the response of the pulmonary vasculature to injury and endothelial cell biology. He has extensive government and private funding. He is a member of several research groups both within the Pulmonary Center and in other divisions within the Department of Medicine: the Pulmonary Vascular Biology Group (Pulmonary Center); the Center for Excellence in Sickle Cell Disease (Hematology), the Scleroderma Vascular Disease Group (Rheumatology) and Pulmonary Vascular/Left Ventricular Study Group (Cardiology). Dr. Farber’s laboratory is investigating the response of the pulmonary vasculature in different etiologies of pulmonary hypertension using genomic and proteomic approaches to identify unique molecules as potential targets for new therapies for pulmonary hypertension associated

Farber is not only a doctor. He is also a keen athlete and has covered a lot of distance in his running career. Originally a distance cyclist, he got hooked on triathlons about 20 years ago, completing his first marathon in 1983 at the end of an ironman-length triathlon on Cape Cod. Since then he's ticked off about 45 marathons, a few ultramarathons (50 miles), numerous triathlons, and the Vermont 100-miler.In 2004, Farber and nine other ultradistance runners ran a combined 3,372 miles from San Francisco to Boston in 24 days to raise money for five local children's charities.

Hap has had his fair share of accidents in his extra-curricular activities.He famously crashed into an MGH resident while cycling to work one morning. Dr Farber experienced a pneumothorax in this accident but rounded in the ICU later that day with a chest tube in place.One of his most catastrophic and dramatic injuries occurred while attending the International American Thoracic Society as he raced through the Presidio. Hap had just mounted his roadbike and was negotiating a turn within a parking lot when he was surprised by a carstop and suffered a tremendous crash flying along at 1 mile/hr. He survived this harrowing incident with only a fractured clavicle and, thankfully, lived to tell the tale.In the Summer of 2007, he was running down a mountain in Colorado when he lost his footing and fell down the mountain. He fractured his patella, fibia and bruised his femur. He also torn his ACL and PCL. Somehow he managed to run the last two miles to the finish line.

elected pblications

*Fisher KA, Serlin DM, Wilson KC, Walter RE, Berman, JS, Farber HW. Sarcoidosis associated pulmonary hypertension: Outcome with long-term epoprostenol treatment (submitted).
*Klings ES, Odhiambo, A, Li, G, Adewoye AH, Ieong, MH, Leopold JA, Steinberg MH, Farber HW. Reactive oxygen species-dependent induction of VCAM-1 expression in cultured pulmonary artery endothelial cells: Effects of sickle cell plasma (submitted)
*Wilson KW, Reardon C, Theodore AC, Farber HW. Propylene glycol toxicity: A severe iatrogenic illness in intensive care unit patients receiving intravenous benzodiazepines. Chest 2005; 128: 1674-1681.
*Farber HW, Loscalzo J. Pulmonary Hypertension (Mechanisms of Disease). N Engl J Med 2004; 351:1655-1665