A $20 million gift from Philip and Cheryl Milstein to the Columbia University Medical Center was announced recently. The donation will be used as part of an effort to rejuvenate the medical campus with construction of the Medical & Graduate Education Building on Haven Street between West 171st and West 172nd Streets. Administrators at Columbia University Medical Center said the building will include “innovative classroom and study spaces that will incorporate state-of-the-art information technology while facilitating collaborative, team-based learning.” The new building’s function will be the training of students in the College of Physicians and Surgeons and the biomedical science departments in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. (Read our earlier blog on this new construction project at CUMC here.)
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At Georgetown University's Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center, researchers have announced the results of an important study showing that high levels of estrogen in the mother during pregnancy can increase a daughter's susceptibility to breast cancer later on. Specifically, the BRCA1 gene is disabled in an estrogen-rich environment, preventing it from carrying out its DNA repair tasks and leaving an opening for cancerous cells to grow. The research was presented at the 2013 American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) meeting by Dr. Leena Hilakivi-Clarke (right). The Hilakivi-Clarke Lab is on the same floor of the Research Building as that of Dr. Robert Clarke, who collaborated on the study; the Clarkes both carry out hormone-related cancer research, and Robert Clarke is the Dean for Research at the Georgetown University Medical Center (GUMC).
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The University of Cincinnati is making great progress in the field of cancer immunotherapy, developing both an oral vaccine for breast cancer and a vaccine for lung cancer in quick succession. Using unique approaches in both solutions, research teams have overcome some previous obstacles in the field to move forward and fight cancer on multiple fronts.
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Bioengineers at the University of California San Diego have come up with a novel way of removing dangerous toxins from the bloodstream using biomimetic nanosponges. These tiny clean-up particles work by posing as red blood cells, which serves both to evade the body's immune system response to foreign invaders and to attract the toxins to themselves instead of to actual red blood cells. When the toxins have all attached themselves to the nanosponges, they are processed out through the liver without harming the body. The research into this promising therapy comes out of the Zhang Lab in the Jacobs School of Engineering, where in 2011 they pioneered the red blood cell disguise technology for cloaking cancer drug cocktails, allowing the drugs much more time in the body to target diseased cells. Dr. Liangfang Zhang is also on the research faculty of the UCSD Moores Cancer Center.
Tags: 2014, CA, University of California San Diego, 2013, nanoparticle, Nanobiotechnology, nanotechnology, Nanoscience, Southwest, California, University of California, Cell Research, San Diego, SDVS, UCSD, Biotechnology Vendor Showcase
The Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and the University of Washington Medicine in Seattle are pleased to announce the arrival soon of Dr. Eric Holland, a world-class brain cancer research scientist and neurosurgeon, who will head up the Human Biology Division at Hutch as well as the Alvord Brain Tumor Center at UW. The eminent MD/PhD is being lured away from Manhattan's Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, where he directs the MSKCC brain tumor center and has his lab within the Cancer Biology and Genetics Program, where his team studies the molecular mechanisms underlying the development of central nervous system tumors. In addition to being the recipient of many prestigious awards over years, Holland brings with him over $3M a year in NIH/NCI funding. It's unclear how many of his 13 lab members will follow him across the country to take on new challenges at Hutch and UW.
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By this point, most Americans are familiar with the gelatinous yellow pill harked by many as a critically necessary supplement. Fish oil pills, packed with omega-3 fatty acids, are sold in many grocery stores and can be found in even more households nationwide. At Michigan State University, bioresearchers are delving deeper into the effects of fish oil on the body. What they have found may sound a little surprising at first: fish oil can increase immunity in people with certain health conditions.
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Green chemistry refers to a number of processes and practices that minimize the toxic or hazardous effects of chemicals in the environment, the lab, or the manufacturing plant. One way to go green is to cut down on the use of dangerous solvents in reactive processes, thereby reducing waste and improving lab safety. Though sometimes a less toxic catalyst or reagent can be employed from the outset, reused, or made inert eventually, another way to get a chemical reaction is to apply physical force instead. Called mechanochemistry, it involves the application of mechanical engineering to chemistry. Instead of adding a solvent, agitation is used to achieve chemical synthesis.
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Emory University physician and deputy director of the Winship Cancer Institute of Emory University Fadlo R. Khuri, MD, will be awarded the prestigious Richard and Hinda Rosenthal Memorial Award from the American Association for Cancer Research. The award will recognize his groundbreaking accomplishments and contributions as a researcher of lung and aerodigestive medical oncology.
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The NIH has just announced $5.3M in two new awards through the Autism Centers of Excellence (ACE) program to support autism research studies led by two University of California investigative teams, at UCLA and the UC Davis Medical Center MIND Institute. ACE funding is earmarked for large, multi-disciplinary studies into the origins of autism spectrum neurological disorders and avenues for their treatment. In the case of the two latest awardees, one is a clinical behavioral study and one is a study of genetic variants. The $5.3M is initial one-year funding, with extensions of up to five years. The ACE program includes both centers and networks. Centers are made up of multiple investigators at one site working together on a specific research problem; networks include investigative teams from different sites engaged in a focused study. Both UCLA and UC Davis are ACE centers and will lead the current research projects, though in collaboration with colleagues at other research institutions, namely Harvard, UW, Vanderbilt, Emory, Johns Hopkins, and Yale. As with all ACE research, data and findings are collected centrally by the NIH to maximize their availability to the larger research community.
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