Upcoming Life Sciences Symposium Will Grapple with Reproducibility Crisis

The Scientific Library employees at NCI’s Frederick Cancer Research Center repeated history in 1972, perhaps without realizing it. Much like the librarians who opened the Camp Detrick Technical Library in 1943, they were among the first staff to begin working at the epicenter of what would soon become an important scientific facility. And like in the early days of Camp Detrick, the Scientific Library rapidly became a hub for information and technology during the FCRC’s first years.

While World War II raged, engineers and tradespeople built up a little airport that’d sat humbly on the outskirts of Frederick since 1929, transforming it into a microbiological research facility. The site, renamed “Camp Detrick,” was to be the home of the new U.S. Army Biowarfare Research Laboratories. This is where the story of the NCI Frederick Scientific Library truly begins.

Experts across scientific fields will convene at Hood College in Frederick, MD, from June 16–18 for the fourth Life Sciences Symposium, aiming to ameliorate the so-called “reproducibility crisis” in research. The three-day symposium is intended to devise and drive solutions to reproducibility issues in biomedical sciences.

Tools developed by chemists at NCI Frederick have at last made it possible to see how some of the most common molecules affect cells’ behavior in cancer and disease. Studying these molecules, glycans, because they can’t directly be sequenced, has been challenging. New research from NCI Frederick’s Chemical Biology Laboratory (CBL) may make it easier.

The Recreation and Welfare Club Frederick (R&WCF) is hosting an exclusive membership evening at the National Museum of Civil War Medicine in downtown Frederick, MD.