Self-Assembling 3D Mini-Tumors Are Poised to Become a New Tool for Studying Cancer

When Shawn Kelly found out last year that he had high blood pressure, he was determined to do something about it. Luckily for Kelly, an instrumentation technician III, Facilities Maintenance and Engineering, he works at the Advanced Technology Research Facility, where he can take advantage of the gym there, known as the Wellness Center.

In Shakespeare’s play “Hamlet,” Polonius inquires of the prince, “What do you read, my lord?” Not at all pleased with what he’s reading, Hamlet replies, “Words, words, words.” I have previously described the communication model in which a sender encodes a message and then sends it via some channel (or medium) to a receiver, who decodes the message and, ideally, understands what was sent. Surely the most common way of encoding a message is in choosing the most appropriate words for the listener or reader.

Forty-nine people joined the facility in September and October 2013.

In these uncertain times, when work can be stressful, disquieting, or downright upsetting, taking an hour on Thursday evenings to work out job- and life-induced twists can provide a welcome element of serenity.

Cytokines are proteins that play a crucial role in the human immune system by delivering messages that trigger the activation of immune cells to fight off attacks from viruses or other invaders. Cristina Bergamaschi, Ph.D., NCI Center for Cancer Research, has been studying the mechanism of expression and function of a cytokine known as interleukin-15 (IL-15) for the last five years, in collaboration with Elena Chertova, Ph.D., and other researchers in the Retroviral Protein Chemistry Core of the AIDS and Cancer Virus Program, Frederick National Laboratory for Cancer Research.