Science

An herbal extract used for centuries to prevent heart disease has now been shown to be effective against colorectal cancer when tested in laboratory cell cultures.

Scientists from NCI at Frederick found that the natural extract cryptotanshinone (CPT) stops the uncontrolled cell growth characteristic of cancer by interfering with a protein that has been implicated in several cancers, including those of the colon and rectum. The results appear in the journal Molecular and Cellular Biochemistry.

Eric Betzig, Ph.D., a 2014 recipient of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry and a scientist at Janelia Research Campus (JRC), Howard Hughes Medical Institute, in Ashburn, Va., visited NCI at Frederick on Sept. 10 to present a Distinguished Scientist lecture and discuss the latest high-resolution microscopy techniques.

Betzig co-invented photoactivation localization microscopy (PALM) in collaboration with scientists at NIH. PALM achieves 10-fold improvement in spatial resolution of cells, going from the resolution limit of approximately 250 nm in standard optical microscopy down to approximately 20 nm, thus producing a so-called “super-resolution” image. Spatial resolution refers to the clarity of an image or, in other words, the smallest details that can be observed from an image.

Scientists at the Frederick National Lab have produced three crystal structures that reveal a specific part of a protein that can be targeted to fight the Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV), which causes an emerging viral respiratory illness.

Senior Investigator David Waugh, Ph.D., Macromolecular Crystallography Laboratory, has solved the structure of an enzyme known as the 3C-like protease (3CLpro), which, if blocked, can prevent the virus from replicating...

The Molecular Characterization Laboratory lies at the heart of an ambitious new approach for testing cancer drugs that will use the newest tools of precision medicine to select the best treatment for individual patients based on the genetic makeup of their tumors.

The protocol, called NCI-Molecular Analysis for Therapy Choice (NCI-MATCH), will start with tumor biopsies from as many as 3,000 patients to see if they have genetic defects for which a targeted cancer drug is available. Cancers will be treated based on their genetic profiles rather than by their location in the body, which is the conventional approach.

The Invention Development Fund (IDF) was piloted by the Technology Transfer Center (TTC) in 2014 to facilitate the commercial development of NCI technologies. The IDF received a second round of funding from the NCI Office of the Director and the Office of Budget and Management to establish the Invention Development Program (IDP) for fiscal year 2016. The IDP is using these funds to help advance a second set of inventions.

Background

The Center for Cancer Research (CCR) and NCI at Frederick recently had the honor of hosting Professor Dr. Her Royal Highness Princess Chulabhorn Mahidol of Thailand.  Her Royal Highness has a special interest in scientific research related to the use of natural products for treating disease.

The purpose of her visit was to discuss the work on natural products being undertaken at NCI at Frederick. Her Royal Highness attended talks by researchers from both the Molecular Targets Laboratory (MTL), CCR, and the Natural Products Branch (NPB), Developmental Therapeutics Program (DTP), Division of Cancer Treatment and Diagnosis (DCTD).

Editor's note: Platinum Highlight articles are noteworthy publications selected periodically by Dr. Craig Reynolds, associate director, National Cancer Institute, from among the most recently published Platinum Publications.

When Alison Rattray and colleagues in the Gene Regulation and Chromosome Biology Laboratory (GRCBL) examined a mutant yeast cell they had isolated in a screen, they noticed something strange.

The DNA exhibited a “very specific, but weird, rearrangement,” she explained. The arrangement turned out to be a DNA palindrome, “opening the door to studying these elusive DNA motifs,” she said.

The NCI-funded Nanotechnology Characterization Laboratory (NCL)—a leader in evaluating promising nanomedicines to fight cancer—recently renewed its collaboration with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to continue its groundbreaking work on characterizing nanomedicines and moving them toward the clinic.

In partnership with NIST and the FDA, NCL has laid a solid, scientific foundation for using the power of nanotechnology to increase the potency and target the delivery

A new breed of lab animals, dubbed “glowing head mice,” may do a better job than conventional mice in predicting the success of experimental cancer drugs—while also helping to meet an urgent need for more realistic preclinical animal models.

The mice were developed to tolerate often-used light-emitting molecules, such as luciferase from fireflies and green fluorescent protein (GFP) from jellyfish. These “optical reporters” are useful for monitoring the effect of experimental therapies in live animals over time because they emit an immediate and easily detected light signal showing whether a tumor inside the animal’s body is shrinking as desired.

Three representatives of METAvivor visited NCI at Frederick on April 13 to meet and tour with Balamurugan Kuppusamy, Ph.D., staff scientist in the laboratory of Esta Sterneck, Ph.D., senior investigator, Laboratory of Cell and Developmental Signaling, Center for Cancer Research.  The purpose of the visit was to learn more about Kuppusamy’s research.

Kuppusamy is a recipient of a $50,000, two-year grant awarded by METAvivor to study the role of the CEBPD-FBXW7 signaling pathway in inflammatory breast cancer.