NCI and FNL Researchers Turn Lessons Learned into Stepping Stones

There are many safety rules and regulations designed to keep us safe as we carry out our individual tasks at NCI, but this issue of the O&M Newsletter is all about evacuation. Specifically, it highlights the importance of the systems and components that ensure the safe evacuation of all building occupants in emergency situations.

Last week, Director Norman E. “Ned” Sharpless spoke with Paul Goldberg, editor and publisher of The Cancer Letter, regarding his six-month “listening tour,” a project he embarked on after being named the new director, as well as his vision for the National Cancer Institute (NCI).

With February coming to a close, Occupational Health Services (OHS) has wrapped up American Heart Month, a four-week-long series of events that raised awareness about heart disease and promoted heart-healthy habits.

(Updated May 8) A study led by the Baylor College of Medicine and supported by NCI’s Center for Cancer Research (CCR) has demonstrated that chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy can be used to treat solid triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) tumors. The investigation is the first work using CAR T-cell therapy against TEM8, a cell surface protein that is frequently overexpressed both in TNBC cells and cells lining the blood vessels that sustain TNBC tumors.

The lunchtime dash to a nearby eatery is a daily ritual at NCI at Frederick, but Occupational Health Services (OHS) recently showed employees a different, healthy kind of DASH—Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension. Employees who visited the educational lunch-hour event, called “DASH and Dine,” had the chance to speak with OHS staff about the benefits of the DASH Eating Plan, a diet developed by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI).