cancer

Out of the Clinic and Into the Lab

Visiting Medical Students Look Back on IRP Research Experience

Alex Valenzuela

When patients are affected by complex and poorly understood medical problems, it can only be an advantage when their doctors have one foot in the exam room and another in a laboratory studying the disease. However, physicians don’t accrue scientific skills on their own. Rather, they often must venture outside of their medical education to gain experience in research via programs like NIH’s Medical Research Scholars Program (MRSP).

The MRSP allows medical students from across the United States to spend a year working in IRP labs alongside seasoned scientists. The 50 medical students and one dental student selected as 2022 Medical Research Scholars recently finished their time at NIH after arriving on campus last July. Between classes, clinical rounds, study sessions, and exams, five of those young men and women found the time to describe their experience at NIH to the “I Am Intramural” blog, so read on to get a taste of what the MRSP has to offer our nation’s aspiring physicians.

Examining Genetic Influences on Lung Cancer

IRP Research Investigates Disease’s Roots Beyond Smoking

magnifying glass examining DNA in the lungs

Today is World Lung Cancer Day, bringing increased awareness to a disease most commonly associated with smoking tobacco products. Yet even though cigarette smoking rates have decreased over the past few decades, this deadly disease remains responsible for more deaths than any other type of cancer — more than 125,000 per year in the U.S. alone. In fact, between 10 and 25 percent of lung cancers occur in people who never smoked.

IRP Stadtman Investigator Jiyeon Choi, Ph.D., has always been curious about how our DNA influences the traits we have and our risk for diseases. When it comes to genes’ contribution to cancer risk, the stakes are particularly high, but Dr. Choi noticed a gap in research when it came to understanding the role genetic variation plays in lung cancer risk. She and her research team aim to fill this gap using a battery of high-tech genomic studies to root out the genes and molecular processes that make some people more susceptible to the disease.

Targeting Tumors in the Brain

IRP Research Brings Hope to Patients with Deadly Cancer

glioma brain tumor

Among the many forms of brain cancer, glioma may be the most well-known, having recently taken the lives of Ted Kennedy in 2009, John McCain in 2018, and actor Tim Conway in 2019. Despite the attention drawn to it by the deaths of these public figures, glioma remains both mysterious and highly lethal. Fortunately, IRP researchers are fighting back against this stubborn foe. In preparation for World Brain Day on July 22, we talked with IRP Lasker Clinical Research Scholar Jing Wu, M.D., Ph.D., about her efforts to better understand glioma and identify potential therapies to treat the deadly disease.

Talk Science to Me

IRP Researchers Leave Jargon Behind for Three-Minute Talks Competition

scientist speaking into a megaphone

Scientific research is often said to take place in an “ivory tower” — not exactly an image associated with accessibility, trust, or empathy. Yet it is essential that members of the public be able to understand the work that researchers devote their lives to.

In recognition of that need, dozens of IRP postbacs, graduate students, and postdocs participate each year in NIH’s Three Minute Talks (TmT) competition. On June 22, this year’s eleven finalists offered clear and concise descriptions of their efforts to unfold the mysteries of proteins’ shapes, discover the lethal role of inflammation in infections, repackage cancer therapies to enhance their effectiveness, and much more.

Treatment Corrects Consequences of Accelerated Cellular Aging

Mouse Study Demonstrates Promise of New Therapy for Rare Genetic Conditions

time warp

If you ask a scientist how old you are, you may be surprised to get a different answer depending on who you’re talking to. That’s because age can be measured both ‘chronologically’ — in terms of time — and at a cellular level. Indeed, certain genetic mutations cause cells to age faster, leading to a host of health problems. Fortunately, a recent IRP study performed in mice suggests that boosting levels of a specific molecule could help alleviate some of those patients’ symptoms.

IRP Research Yields Life-Changing Treatments

Highlighting Drugs and Vaccines Stemming from NIH Discoveries

syringe and vials of medicine

On May 3, more than six decades of IRP research culminated in the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approving the world’s first vaccine for respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), a disease that puts tens of thousands of Americans in the hospital each year and kills thousands. While the new vaccine, called Arexy, has been getting all the headlines recently, it is only the latest example of a slew of FDA-approved medications and vaccines that might never have existed without the tireless efforts of scientists at NIH.

Indeed, a recently published study led by Mark Rohrbaugh, Ph.D., J.D., a special advisor in the NIH Office of Science Policy, found that inventions developed at NIH have contributed to more FDA-approved products than those created at any other nonprofit research institution in the world over the past five decades. NIH tops the study’s list with 27 FDA-approved products, six more than the study attributed to the combined efforts of all the schools in the University of California system.

Postbac Poster Day Returns to NIH Campus

Budding Scientists Assemble for First Time Since 2019

IRP postbac fellow Vernon Kennedy with his poster at Postbac Poster Day

In many ways, working at NIH feels like being at a world-renowned university, complete with a variety of classes, intellectually stimulating lectures, social events, and opportunities for professional development. It’s no wonder, then, that NIH has long been a destination for young people who have just departed from their alma maters with their newly earned undergraduate degrees.

These new graduates come to the IRP to hone their scientific skills in NIH’s Postbac IRTA program, conducting research in IRP labs for one or two years under the expert guidance of the IRP’s seasoned investigators. The program also provides the opportunity once per year for participants to present the fruits of their efforts to all their IRP colleagues at Postbac Poster Day, and this year’s event on April 19 and 20 was the first to include an in-person component since 2019. Read on to learn about a few of the nearly 1,000 postbacs who showed off their research at this year’s event, which spanned fields from neuroscience and cancer to genetics and virtual reality.

Symposium Celebrates Award-Winning Female Scientists

Three Young Women Honored at Annual Event

Dr. Brittany Lord

There’s no doubt that science flourishes when it welcomes individuals with different backgrounds and perspectives. In pursuit of that goal, NIH has put considerable effort into closing the gender gap in the biomedical sciences, a field in which men significantly outnumber women, especially as the heads of labs and in leadership positions. Those efforts have so far yielded promising progress, with the proportion of women in IRP senior investigator positions increasing from 22 percent at the end of fiscal year 2016 to 27 percent at the end of fiscal year 2022. Over that same time period, women went from comprising 38 percent of IRP tenure-track investigators to 44 percent.

Part of what makes the IRP a welcoming place for female scientists is the NIH Women Scientists Advisors (WSA), a group of IRP scientists elected to represent the interests of women in the IRP. Once per year, the WSA selects a few female postdoctoral fellows or graduate students conducting research at NIH as WSA Scholars. At a symposium on April 13 honoring the achievements of this year’s Scholars, the awardees presented their efforts to learn more about a devastating childhood neurological condition, decrease health disparities in breast cancer, and use stem cells to investigate the roots of a nerve-destroying disorder. Read on to learn more about this year’s WSA Scholars and the important work they’re doing in their IRP labs.

NIH Mourns the Passing of W. Michael Kuehl

Dr. W. Michael Kuehl

The IRP community mourns the recent passing of our colleague W. Michael Kuehl, M.D., former senior investigator in the Genetics Branch at the National Cancer Institute (NCI), after a long struggle with renal cancer.

In his more than 30 years at NCI, Michael was devoted to understanding the cellular and molecular biology of multiple myeloma (MM) and pre-malignant MGUS (monoclonal gammopathy of uncertain significance), a precursor of the disease. He identified multiple mechanisms of molecular pathogenesis in MM and he linked pre-malignant MGUS to MM, which is relevant for the early diagnosis and treatment of MM.

Dying Tumor Cells Suppress Anti-Cancer Immune Response

IRP Study Points to Strategies to Stop Disease From Spreading

T cells (red) attacking cancer cell (white)

Ancient Greek myth describes how the hero Hercules battled the many-headed hydra, which regrew two heads every time Hercules cut one off. This frustrating fight against a seemingly invulnerable opponent would be an apt metaphor for treating cancer, in which tumor cells sometimes die in a particular way that actually helps their brethren multiply and spread to other parts of the body. In a study of that phenomenon using a mouse model of breast cancer, IRP researchers discovered that it occurs because that form of cell death suppresses the immune system’s response to the cancer, a finding that points to several potential ways to improve cancer therapy.