NCI Campus in Frederick

What’s Happening in NCI’s Storied Labs to the North?

BY TANIA B. LOMBO, NCI

NIH Catalyst readers might be aware that the National Cancer Institute (NCI) has research labs in Frederick, Md. But how many know that—or why, for that matter—those labs are inside the gates of an army base? Or that what used to be called simply NCI-Frederick is now a composite of a recently designated national lab, several NCI Center for Cancer Research (CCR) intramural labs, and an administrative entity called the NCI Campus at Frederick?

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Maryland’s U.S. Senators Visit NIH

Senators Ben Cardin and Barbara Mikulski Talk About Sequestration

BY JOSEPH P. TIANO, NIDDK

U.S. Senator Ben Cardin (D-Md.) appeared at an NIH Town Hall Meeting on February 8, to express his support for NIH and its mission, to talk about the state of the federal budget and his hope that sequestration—which took effect on March 1—could be avoided, and to field questions from the audience. And U.S. Senator Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.) stopped by—for a tour and press conference—on February 20 to express her concerns.

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Andrew Singleton: Treating Rare Diseases from Bench to Bedside

In 2010, a grieving mother whose two young children had died from a rare neurological disorder was determined to see that no other family would suffer as hers had. She turned to NIH, sure that its scientists could decipher the genetic causes of Brown-Vialetto–Van Laere syndrome (BVVL), a disorder characterized by deafness, paralysis, and respiratory failure. Neurogeneticist Andrew Singleton at the National Institute on Aging (NIA) accepted the challenge. After all, he and his colleagues had discovered the genetic mutations responsible for a similar, albeit more common, neurodegenerative disorder—Parkinson disease.

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Guest Editorial

Opening the Doors of the Clinical Center

BY JOHN I. GALLIN, DIRECTOR OF THE NIH CLINICAL CENTER

The Clinical Center is opening its doors—and providing access to its special resources—to investigators from academia and industry. A formal funding opportunity for new partnerships between outside and intramural investigators at the CC promises to bring new intellectual excitement to the intramural program while enabling clinical research projects that might not otherwise occur.

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Obituaries: Kuan-Teh Jeang

NIH Mourns Death of Retrovirus Expert

Kuan-Teh Jeang, an accomplished virologist and chief of the Molecular Virology Section of the NIAID Laboratory of Molecular Microbiology, died suddenly on January 27 at age 54. He had worked at NIH since 1985. Jeang’s research focused on the gene regulation of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and how human T-cell lymphotropic virus type 1 (HTLV-1) causes leukemia.

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Commentary

Basic-Research Training for Physician-Scientists

BY BOLANLE FAMAKIN, NINDS

NIH needs a structured basic-research-training program for physicians who have completed medical training and want to become independent investigators engaged in basic research. Read what Dr. Bolanle Famakin, a stroke neurologist and former NIH clinical fellow, has to say.

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Commentary

Enhanced Oversight of Selected Research Proposed

BY HENRY METZGER, NIAMS

The U.S. government is considering new regulations for mitigating the potential for harmful misuse of new research findings. In 2012, the government issued a policy that required its funding agencies to review and establish management criteria for life-sciences “dual-use research of concern” (DURC). Now there's a proposal that would require institutions that conduct such research to assume responsibility for overseeing it themselves. The dual dilemma is how to develop procedures that will promote safety and security without discouraging investigators from pursuing potentially useful research.

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Colleagues: Recently Tenured

Meet your recently tenured colleagues: Laura Elnitski (NHGRI), Caroline Fox (NHLBI, Framingham), Gary Gibbons (NIMHD, NHLBI), Eddie Reed (NIMHD), Sharon Savage (NCI-DCEG), Jyoti Misra Sen (NIA), and Alfonso Silva (NINDS)

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The Training Page

NEI Builds a Community for Scientists in Training

BY DUSTIN HAYS, NEI

Led by NEI Deputy Scientific Director Sarah Sohraby, the NEI intramural training program is helping research fellows balance work-life issues and become more competitive in the workplace.

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