After hours at the microscope, Sebastian Temme, Ph.D., was at a loss. The bacterial structures he’d been examining weren’t arranged the way he expected they’d be. He and his colleagues initially feared they’d done the experiment wrong, but they soon realized they’d latched onto something fascinating.

Imagine, for a moment, that you’re a scientist studying ways to combat a rare form of cancer that overwhelmingly manifests in a specific group of people. You suspect a series of genetic mutations. Testing for the presence of those alterations one at a time would involve a prohibitive amount of time and money. What you need is a database of thousands of cancer cases, characterized for genetic data, to which you could compare your cases. Enter NCI’s Genomic Data Commons.

Imagine a heavy roof propped up by slender pillars. Now imagine knocking down one of those pillars. The others buckle under the weight, and soon the whole thing comes crashing down. NCI Frederick scientists, with collaborators from the National Institutes of Health, industry, and academia, have achieved something similar in laboratory models of head and neck squamous cell carcinoma, a group of mouth, throat, and nasal cavity cancers with life-altering complications.

NCI Postbaccalaureate fellow Alana Thomas was thrilled to attend the HIV DRP Think Tank for her second time. Professor John Coffin, Ph.D., was attending for his 27th time—and was no less thrilled. Looking on, it was easy to see why. The 27th HIV Dynamics and Replication Program (DRP) Think Tank, hosted by NCI Frederick, was a decidedly intimate gathering as far as scientific meetings go. The 18 short lectures and small guest list played a part in that—just over 130 scientists attended this year, most of them federal or National Laboratory employees—but more pervasive was the current of passion and tight-knit camaraderie.

NCI Frederick’s Frank Cuttitta, Ph.D.; academic scientists; and an antibody manufacturer have unmasked an enigmatic protein and overturned decades of convention surrounding its relevance to cancer and biology. They’ve also identified some tissues in which it can be found and have confirmed its presence in some human cancers, raising it as a potential target for treatment.