So, even though the dog days of August are upon us, there’s no reason to escape from the heat. We enjoyed the weekend by visiting Mt. Vernon, which was amazingly impressive. The myth of George Washington is so powerful that it is very useful to catch a glimpse of the man behind the myth, and to understand more fully his remarkable life and work. He truly was a giant.
I have been busily working on a variety of projects. Most notably, I spent Thursday and Friday at the NCI Translational Science meeting, which was held at the Marriott Wardman hotel. I have never really found these types of meetings to be terribly useful in the past, but this one had a number of interesting sessions. It is evident that there is a lot of interest in the development of comprehensive databases of the type exemplified by G-DOC. Between our efforts in that arena, and the power of our relationship with Indivumed to collect, process and store patient specimens, we remain in an excellent position to make distinctive contributions to the field.
I chaired a session on the use of ‘omics technologies to inform translational immunotherapy efforts, and it was a stimulating 90 minutes. The field of immunology–in fact the entire field of cancer research– has never been more full of opportunities to transform cancer prevention, detection and therapy.
Even though financial pressures will undoubtedly impact on the resources available through NIH and other governmental agencies to support research over the next few years, I truly believe “the train has left the station;” this work will move forward because too much momentum has been generated throughout the extramural community. Georgetown Lombardi can respond by emphasizing collaborations that leverage our intellectual assets and unique attributes.
A number of groups are actively working to put together P01s, U01s, and multi-principal-investigator grants. I hope everybody looks for such opportunities to create projects and discoveries in which the whole is truly greater that the sum of its parts.
Have a great week.