So, I had a fairly interesting week. Last Thursday and Friday I participated in the annual NCI Cancer Center Directors’ Retreat and heard John Niederhuber’s final address prior to the announcement of President Obama’s intent to nominate Harold Varmus as the new NCI director. John was reflective in his comments, not surprisingly. Although he has had a challenging tenure due to budgetary constraints, he has been a strong advocate for the cancer centers program, and provided important support to Lombardi during a period of leadership transition. I wish him well as he moves on to new challenges. I also am interested in learning about how Dr. Varmus will shake up the NCI (if at all) once he assumes his new responsibilities. He is certainly thought to be a friend of R01-based research, but should he choose to invest more resources in that direction, something will have to give, since the NCI budget is not likely to rise appreciably.
On Monday, I attended my first (!) graduate student Ph.D. thesis proposal meeting. Rochelle Nasto is a Drexel University graduate student who is based in the lab of my collaborator, Erica Golemis. Rochelle has spent the past year or so in my lab, devising and conducting screening of an estrogen receptor-targeted siRNA library to identify determinants of survival and drug resistance. Accordingly, I serve on her committee at Drexel. She did very well, so it was a very positive experience for me. Coming from a freestanding cancer center, I never had graduate students before, so I found the whole exercise quite interesting.
On Tuesday I gave a lecture at UMBC at a graduate students’ symposium in their new research building. It was nice to catch up with our old friend, Kevin Cullen, and hear about the nice things that are happening at that cancer center. Wednesday was highlighted by the research seminar given by Dr. Xuefeng Liu, who spoke about papillomavirus, telomerase and cell immortalization. It was a very nice and provocative presentation. Unfortunately, attendance was pretty low, so lots of people missed out on hearing some very good science. I have been as guilty as many others in missing these seminars, but have vowed to make them a priority; it’s a great way for me to learn more about what is going on in our scientific community. Yesterday morning, Vicente Notario met with the Hematology/Oncology fellows to describe his research. I was pleased to hear the many probing and thoughtful questions he received from the group; these trainees can and should be targeted for clinical research-based collaborations by our scientific community.
The rest of the week has been consumed by clinic, lab meetings, grant reviews, a manuscript submission, a chapter submission for the DeVita textbook, budget meetings and senior faculty evaluations. All in all, it’s been a pretty typical week. However, I am looking forward to the weekend!