Those of you who tuned into the six-hour PBS documentary Cancer: The Emperor of All Maladies—a Ken Burns production based on a Pulitzer prize–winning book by Siddhartha Mukherjee—may have noticed how closely the history of cancer advances parallels the history of the NIH intramural research program.
NIH research highlights include: a genetic link for a rare intestinal cancer; no evidence of accelerated Ebola virus evolution in West Africa; how developmental signaling is controlled; circulating tumor DNA predicts recurrence of lymphoma; anti-herpes drug may help control HIV; an allergy drug inhibits hepatitis C in mice; and signals from epithelial progenitor cells promote innervation of developing organs.
When United States Senators Barbara Mikulski (D-Maryland) and Ben Cardin (D-Maryland) visited NIH a few weeks ago, they pledged their support for getting more federal funding for biomedical research; to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Nirenberg’s cracking of the genetic code, the National Library of Medicine held “A Tribute to Marshall Nirenberg.”
Congratulations to Alan Hinnebusch (NICHD) and Warren Leonard (NHLBI), who are new National Academy of Sciences members; Roger Glass, winner of the 2015 Albert B. Sabin Gold Medal Award; and Michael Lenardo (NIAID) and Wei Yang (NIDDK), who were recently elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
