NCI Frederick researchers and colleagues are improving therapies that modify and equip a patient’s own immune cells to target their solid tumors. Their modification, while still at an early stage of development, can potentially minimize the risk that the armed cells will be therapeutically rejected.

The Frederick Postbac Committee, comprising NCI Frederick postbaccalaureate fellows, held their second annual Frederick Postbac Poster Day in March. The event, organized by the Committee and collaborating staff, showcased postbac research over the past year and gave postbacs an opportunity to practice sharing their science with an audience of their peers. All NCI employees were invited to attend, and the Frederick Postbac Committee was pleased with the turnout, which included postbacs, postdocs, and senior scientists alike.

Academic researchers, along with scientists at NCI Frederick, are repurposing a harmless bacterial virus to reactivate dormant HIV-infected T cells—a type of white blood cell—for destruction. Their proof-of-concept study, published in iScience, is an early step in testing this platform.

Nadya Tarasova, Ph.D., clicked her mouse a few times, repositioning some letters and lines on her computer screen. The program on display looked like it could be Photoshop’s distant cousin, but even an uninitiated onlooker could’ve seen this wasn’t artwork. It was SLICE, one of the world’s first—and newest—chemistry coding programs to have a graphical interface.

Experts across scientific fields will convene at Hood College in Frederick, MD, from June 16–18 for the fourth Life Sciences Symposium, aiming to ameliorate the so-called “reproducibility crisis” in research. The three-day symposium is intended to devise and drive solutions to reproducibility issues in biomedical sciences.