NCI Frederick recently bid farewell to its 33rd class of Werner H. Kirsten student interns. Having completed their senior year of high school—and a rigorous year-long internship—the students are off to confront their next big challenge. The campus recognized them all in the program’s first in-person closing ceremony since 2019.
Steak is always good, but it’s better with some sizzle. So said Kedar Narayan, Ph.D., in preparation for his keynote address at the 2024 Fort Detrick Spring Research Festival. Like a chef preparing a meal, he aimed for his lecture to offer the audience something particularly enticing.
On April 9, 1984, a special package from Bethesda arrived at Building 560 on the Frederick Cancer Research Facility campus. In an unusual move, it came not by courier but by scientist, who carried it directly to a biosafety level 3 laboratory, at the time one of FCRF’s few facilities for working with highly dangerous biological entities. Exposure to the box’s contents meant likelihood of a protracted death. Julian Bess Jr. remembers when Larry Arthur, Ph.D., brought that box containing two sealed flasks of HIV-infected cells into their laboratory.
Robot R, part of NCI Frederick’s new automated apparatus for screening potential cancer therapeutics, uses its arm to meticulously fill the wells of a 384-well plate with droplets of human tumor cell cultures smaller than a raindrop. Robot L stands at the ready on the other side of the apparatus, awaiting its own instructions. Laboratory staff members work nearby, but after they load the apparatus with the supplies it needs, the robotic system carries on independently.
A new U.S. clinical trial will evaluate whether an at-home, self-collection technique to screen for cervical cancer is as accurate and effective as a Pap smear test done in a healthcare clinic. The Clinical Monitoring Research Program Directorate at the Frederick National Laboratory for Cancer Research will coordinate the National Cancer Institute study to be conducted at 25 sites.
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