For the past 16 years, the annual Spring Research Festival has been sponsored by NCI at Frederick and Fort Detrick to acquaint fellow researchers, students, and the community at large with the important discoveries being made at this facility to fight cancer, AIDS, and other infectious diseases.

Deborah Morrison, Ph.D., laboratory chief, Laboratory of Cell and Developmental Signaling, Center for Cancer Research (CCR), received an NIH Director’s Award in June “for major breakthroughs in elucidating the mechanisms of Ras/Raf signaling that will be critical for diagnosis and treatment of disease,” according to the NIH Director’s Awards Ceremony brochure. She was nominated by Ira Daar, Ph.D., senior investigator, Developmental Signal Transduction Section, Laboratory of Cell and Developmental Signaling, CCR.

The human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) targets specific immune cells in the body known as macrophages because these are the cells that eliminate foreign material such as bacteria or viruses. HIV is able to reproduce and spread throughout the body if it can avoid destruction by macrophages. A recent study by Lue Dai, Ph.D., and colleagues revealed that the human cytokine IL-27 helps promote the body’s production of macrophages that are resistant to HIV.

Earlier this year, the Office of AIDS Research (OAR) awarded two, two-year grants of $200,000 each to Anu Puri, Ph.D., and Robert Blumenthal, Ph.D., both of the Center for Cancer Research (CCR) Nanobiology Program, and to Eric Freed, Ph.D., of the HIV Drug Resistance Program, for their research on potential new treatments for HIV.

Armed with an array of leading-edge technologies, scientific and technical expertise, and the full backing of the National Cancer Institute’s scientific advisers, the Frederick National Laboratory for Cancer Research is preparing to launch a full-scale attack against an intractable problem:  the cancer-causing family of Ras genes.