This February saw Occupational Health Services host two lunch-hour activities to encourage employees to invest in cardiovascular health and healthy living. The 18th Chili Cook-off occurred on February 7, and a Heart Health Webinar occurred on February 12. Both coincided with American Heart Month.

A mutated, cancer-causing protein twisted and bent across the computer screen. As Ruth Nussinov, Ph.D., and her team watched the simulation, two things quickly became evident. First, it was clear how the mutation paved the way for cancers to form. Second, the twisting and bending created a pocket—a gap in the protein’s proverbial armor—no one had seen before. Nussinov’s team at Frederick National Laboratory for Cancer Research has illuminated through computational simulations how mutated versions of that protein, mTOR, contribute to cancer at a molecular level.