Looking Back on Nancy Martin’s Service at the Media Laboratory

NCI Postbaccalaureate fellow Alana Thomas was thrilled to attend the HIV DRP Think Tank for her second time. Professor John Coffin, Ph.D., was attending for his 27th time—and was no less thrilled. Looking on, it was easy to see why. The 27th HIV Dynamics and Replication Program (DRP) Think Tank, hosted by NCI Frederick, was a decidedly intimate gathering as far as scientific meetings go. The 18 short lectures and small guest list played a part in that—just over 130 scientists attended this year, most of them federal or National Laboratory employees—but more pervasive was the current of passion and tight-knit camaraderie.

NCI Frederick’s Frank Cuttitta, Ph.D.; academic scientists; and an antibody manufacturer have unmasked an enigmatic protein and overturned decades of convention surrounding its relevance to cancer and biology. They’ve also identified some tissues in which it can be found and have confirmed its presence in some human cancers, raising it as a potential target for treatment.

After a productive year in business, the NCI Frederick Media Laboratory is closing again. The service, with its longtime goal of sustainability, was in the hands of Nancy Martin and Dan McVicar, Ph.D. The move comes on the heels of Martin’s retirement from NCI. In light of the change, Poster recognizes her steadfast dedication for the past year.

A patient is taking a chemotherapy drug that may stop the progression of their cancer, but they develop painful blisters and swelling on their hands and feet, which affects their daily life, another challenge on an already arduous journey navigating a cancer diagnosis. This condition, palmar-plantar erythrodysesthesia (PPE), causes inflammation and damage to the palms and soles of the feet as a side effect of certain anticancer treatments, limiting these drugs’ effectiveness. Drug developers and researchers have struggled to identify new drugs’ potential for PPE because of a lack of reliable animal and laboratory models. Being able to identify this potential side effect earlier in the process could prevent researchers from expending effort developing treatments that’d cause it. In partnership with outside collaborators, the Nanotechnology Characterization Laboratory (NCL) at the Frederick National Laboratory for Cancer Research (FNL) worked backwards from drugs known to cause the toxicity to develop an assay that could identify it.

After nearly eight years of meticulous collaborative effort, the HPV Serology Laboratory at the Frederick National Laboratory for Cancer Research has achieved a major milestone in advancing global human papillomavirus (HPV) research. They and their research network have developed and established International Standards for antibodies to seven types of HPV—HPV6, HPV11, HPV31, HPV33, HPV45, HPV52, and HPV58. These are the first-ever serology International Standards for these HPV types.