To say Cathy Cullen’s “lab” in Building 427 is nontraditional would be a bit of an understatement. Instead of pipettes, there are pipe cleaners. The chemical reactants are baking soda and lemon juice. And the “animal” is a blue plastic robotic mouse. Cullen’s operation is the epicenter of Education Outreach Services in the Office of Scientific Operations for NCI at Frederick. She is tasked with bringing extracurricular science to young people in Frederick County Public Schools and local organizations.

As we try to stay connected to work, friends, and family while social distancing, we’re reaching for our cell phones more often—but is there any reason to worry? The best evidence says no.

A team from the Biopharmaceutical Development Program is developing a new autologous cell therapy line that uses engineered chimeric antigen receptor T cells to treat acute myeloid leukemia, a particularly aggressive form of pediatric blood cancer. This foray into cell immunotherapy represents a new avenue of research and development for the BDP, which has traditionally focused on biologics to fight cancer, HIV, and rare diseases.

As the director of the Molecular Diagnostics Laboratory, Gordon Whiteley has one message for his team: “Treat every sample as if it were your own, your mother’s, or (from) someone you care about.” Whiteley and his team, part of the Cancer Research Technology Program at the Frederick National Laboratory, work in a high-complexity lab that operates under rigorous standards of the Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments. The tests developed by the lab (one of five high-complexity labs associated with FNL) generally are not available anywhere else.

For Kelly J. Lockard Toms, an associate in Occupational Health Services, Cervical Cancer Awareness Month is every month. Education and outreach efforts for cervical cancer are usually observed during the month of January. But as a cervical cancer survivor, Lockard Toms never misses an opportunity to educate women about the disease—and what can be a simple way to prevent it.