Each year, two Student Poster Days—one at the NCI at Frederick campus and one on the Bethesda campus—give students a chance to showcase the work they do in NCI and NIH labs and offices. NCI at Frederick’s event was held in the Building 549 lobby, while the Bethesda poster day was held at the Natcher Conference Center in Building 45 on NIH’s main campus.
The NCI Technology Transfer Center (TTC) facilitates partnerships between NIH research laboratories and external partners. With a team of technology transfer specialists, NCI TTC guides interactions from discovery to patenting, as well as from collaboration and invention development to licensing.
Over the past 12 months, we’ve grown accustomed to seeing Zika in the news. The virus has been linked to thousands of cases of microcephaly in Brazilian babies. Numerous countries, including the United States, have reported Zika-related deaths. And there is no vaccine available at this time. In the face of what has become a global health crisis, the Vaccine Research Center (VRC) at the NIH/National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) responded to a call from Anthony Fauci, Ph.D., head, NIAID, to get a candidate vaccine into human trials by the summer of 2016.
Genetically modified soya beans provide a scalable, low-cost method of producing microbicides that prevent AIDS, a technique sustainable for resource-poor countries where AIDS is spreading rapidly.
According to the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS, more than 36 million people worldwide are living with HIV. While the number of AIDS-related deaths are decreasing, infection rates are still increasing, specifically in Eastern and Southern Africa.
Until recently, researchers studying RAS, a family of proteins involved in transmitting signals within cells, believed that the exchange of guanosine 5’-diphosphate (GDP) by guanosine triphosphate (GTP) was sufficient to activate the protein. Once activated, RAS can cause unintended and overactive signaling in cells, which can lead to cell division and, ultimately, cancer.
Johns Hopkins University’s (JHU) Advanced Academic Programs (AAP) division recently announced two classes that will be hosted at the Frederick Center for Research and Education in Science and Technology (CREST) this fall.
According to a JHU press release, the classes are Biochemistry, which is part of the M.S. in Biotechnology program at JHU AAP, and Molecular Biology, a part of the M.S. in Bioinformatics program at JHU AAP.
At the 2016 Science Skills Boot Camp (SSBC), a one-day training program designed for NIH summer interns with little or no prior research experience, students gathered to learn about basic research and laboratory skills. The boot camp provided a unique opportunity for interns to expand their knowledge of simple bench techniques, scientific papers, and ways to communicate their research.
The Federal Laboratory Consortium (FLC) presented an Excellence in Technology Transfer award to the group that collaborated to bring Unituxin (dinutuximab, also known as ch14.18), an immunotherapy for neuroblastoma, to licensure.
The 20th annual Spring Research Festival (SRF) took place at Fort Detrick on May 3 and 4. The event included two seminar sessions, a keynote speaker, a Poster Blitz, and two poster sessions. During the event, scientific staff, including students, technical support staff, postdoctoral fellows, and principal investigators, had the opportunity to present their research to the joint scientific communities.
Three Werner H. Kirsten student interns claimed awards at the 35th Annual Frederick County Science and Engineering Fair—and got a shot at the national competition—for imaginative projects that reached out to the rings of Saturn and down to the details of advanced cancer diagnostics.
