Science

In 1953, a teenaged Alan Rein read about what James Watson and Francis Crick famously called “the secret of life”—the double-helix structure of DNA, which had just been published in Nature. Captivated, Rein decided at that moment that he wanted to be a biochemist. Rein’s biochemistry aspirations shifted to virology during college, leading him to a 60-year career in the field, the last 45 years of which were spent at NCI Frederick, studying how retroviruses like murine leukemia virus and HIV assemble themselves and infect host cells while somehow evading the immune response.

Researchers from around the world met in October to mark progress their field has made in developing drugs to treat cancers driven by the RAS oncogene, and to map out even more ways they can help cancer patients. “This is a great story about tackling an intractable disease that was said to be an impossible task,” said National Cancer Institute Director W. Kimryn Rathmell, M.D.

A scientist pushes a small gray button on a red metal box, activating a pump that shoots clear fluids from two syringes into a small compartment just a few square centimeters in size. From there, the mixture is forced through a thin tube into a thumb-sized glass vial, where it pools with a few small bubbles.

That scientist, Caleb Anderson, Ph.D., a postdoctoral fellow at NCI Frederick’s Chemical Biology Laboratory, was hired to solve a problem, and this machine and its contents represent the solution he has spent months designing, calibrating, and testing. The mixture contains tens of thousands of nanoparticles of a developmental novel therapeutic agent targeting mesothelioma, an aggressive form of cancer that affects the surface tissue lining various organs, such as the lungs.

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.

Scientists at the Frederick National Laboratory for Cancer Research and their National Cancer Institute colleagues have developed a method that enhances the capacity to identify interactions between proteins and molecules that are critical to drug targeting. The study, reported in Science Advances, includes libraries to aid other researchers.

The Frederick National Laboratory for Cancer Research has a new installation: a wall featuring 34 plaques highlighting patents granted to FNL researchers in recognition of their inventions and the breakthrough work being done at the laboratory. The “Innovations in Research” wall represents the mission of FNL staff to address some of the most urgent challenges in the biomedical sciences.

The lockdowns during 2020, the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, temporarily paused most laboratory work, but they didn’t stop science from moving forward. Many scientists, including those comprising what’s now NCI’s Center for Structural Biology, seized the opportunity while out of the lab to revisit previously collected data. Those efforts are paying off.