There’s not much left to say about the CCSG Competitive Renewal. We are still planning to go to the printer this week, and are pulling together the last bits and pieces. It has been quite an odyssey! I do believe that this submission does a wonderful job of describing the work we do at Georgetown Lombardi. One can never predict how we might be evaluated in peer review, of course, but if I were a neutral reviewer I would be impressed by what we have accomplished.
One highlight of the week was my visit to NCI to speak at the Antibody Interest group. Several noteworthy points were highlighted by my visit: 1) Because I am a member of the Board of Scientific Counselors of the NCI I have an ID badge through 2017. So, I don’t need to go through security and neither does my car. This makes any visit to the NIH campus far less onerous! 2) I still get seriously excited by the work being done in my lab group. My talk consisted of several vignettes. The first described work done by postdoctoral fellow Shangzi Wong, showing that antibody therapy induces host-protective immunity against the targeted tumor antigen. The next vignette highlighted work being done by MD/PhD student Rishi Surana, showing that the tumor model employed by Shangzi is characterized by the elaboration of IL-4, which can be therapeutically neutralized to promote antibody therapy. Next I described the work being done by Joe Murray, an MD/PhD student who is finishing his thesis work to explore mechanisms by which tumor cells resist antibody-dependent cellular cytotoxicity (ADCC). Finally, I discussed the work of Casey Shuptrine, a PhD student who is doing an innovative in vivo functional genomics screen to identify the tumor-cell-based determinants that regulate ADCC and anti-tumor immunity. As soon as the CCSG is done, there are about five new grants I need to write so we can continue and expand this work.
One final note about this coming weekend’s Avon Walk for Breast Cancer. Our Lombardi/CBCC team has raised (as of Sunday evening) a total of $121,684. The team is in second place in the region, and $42,000 ahead of the next team. What an effort! Please feel free to donate to enable every walker to raise the $1,800 necessary to participate (look for walkers who have not yet raised the $1,800). And, while it is probably too late to train for the walk, it is most certainly not too late to cheer on the team — contact Jeanne Mandelblatt if you want to get involved.
If you can’t make it out this weekend, or if you’re not quite up for 39 miles, next weekend (May 11) we are participating in the Komen Global Race for the Cure, which is just 5K and a couple hours. Check out the Capital Breast Care Center Crusaders team page for more info, to donate to the team, or to join.
This is important work; some of you may have read the provocative an interesting article in this Sunday’s New York Times Magazine about cause-specific and event-based fundraising for breast cancer research. One can question the approach, but I can assure you that Lombardi researchers and patients have benefited from support of Avon, Komen and other organizations. If you believe, as I do, that our work is important, then what these organizations do is valuable and enabling.
Have a great week.