Amanda Corbel
Manager, Communications Office
Email amanda.corbel@nih.gov or call 301-228-4489 for all media related questions.
Controlling blood sugar may improve outcomes for diabetic lung cancer patients
The benefits of controlling a patient’s diabetes are well established. But the consequences of unregulated diabetes on survival rates for lung cancer have been widely debated. Now, a retrospective study of people with lung cancer who are diabetic shows they can survive longer if their blood sugar levels are carefully controlled. This holds true across broad socioeconomic and demographic populations that include obese and morbidly obese patients. The study examined de-identified health records of 32,642 lung cancer patients from the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center (MDACC) and 17,768 patients from the Louisiana Tumor Registry and Ochsner Health and University Medical Center New Orleans. It drew an association between glycemic (blood sugar) control and improved survival rates among lung cancer patients who also had diabetes. The findings reveal statistically significantly improved overall survival in lung cancer patients having controlled versus uncontrolled blood sugar levels. "These findings make a strong POSTED: 12/3/2024
New training series for rapid response clinical research available for free
Virtual training series aims to educate and empower clinical researchers to perform rapid response clinical studies in atypical environments.POSTED: 11/20/2024
Progress against RAS-driven cancers lauded at RAS Symposium, with more candidate treatments on the horizon
Researchers from around the world met in October to mark progress their field has made in developing drugs to treat cancers driven by the RAS oncogene, and to map out even more ways they can help cancer patients. “This is a great story about tackling an intractable disease that was said to be an impossible task,” said National Cancer Institute Director W. Kimryn Rathmell, M.D., who welcomed participants to the fifth, three-day RAS Symposium. “That challenge motivated people to take it on. It’s a paradigm for success and a program that should be replicated.” The RAS Symposium brings together basic and clinical RAS investigators every two years to evaluate and share their approaches to attack proteins encoded by mutant forms of RAS genes and to ultimately create effective, new therapies for RAS-driven cancers. Many of the participants collaborate as part of the NCI’s RAS Initiative, for which FNL is the POSTED: 11/19/2024
New cancer data commons expands available clinical and translational data
A collaboration between development teams from the National Cancer Institute and the Frederick National Laboratory for Cancer Research has resulted in the September launch of a new data commons that houses clinical and translational cancer data. As the newest component of NCI’s Cancer Research Data Commons, the Clinical and Translational Data Commons (CTDC) provides researchers access to data from NCI-funded clinical trials, correlative studies, and interventional studies. Unique among the NCI’s component data commons, the CTDC includes data about participant demographics, disease stages, and targeted therapies. “Access to high-quality harmonized clinical and translational data is becoming more and more important for cancer researchers,” said John Otridge, Ph.D., director of the Center for Technical Operations Support within the Bioinformatics and Computational Science Directorate at the Frederick National Laboratory. The new data commons launched with an inaugural dataset from the Cancer Moonshot Biobank SM , a 5-year project to learn more about POSTED: 10/29/2024
Infectious diseases scientific meeting highlights findings of NIAID mpox vaccine study supported by FNL
Results of a Phase 2 clinical trial in adolescents that showed a vaccine to prevent mpox was safe and generated an antibody response equivalent to that seen in adults was presented as a Late-Breaking Clinical Trial and highlighted during a media briefing on Wednesday at IDWeek 2024 , the annual meeting of the Infectious Diseases Society of America and partner professional societies. A Frederick National Laboratory team from the Clinical Monitoring Research Program Directorate supported the U.S. clinical trial, led by Mary Healy, MD at Baylor College of Medicine and sponsored by the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. In August, the World Health Organization declared mpox a public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC), following an upsurge of cases in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and a growing number of countries in Africa. The U.S. clinical trial sites administered two doses of POSTED: 10/16/2024
The widely used model organism zebrafish may help shed light on blood-brain barrier
Scientists investigated four homologous zebrafish genes, finding the zebrafish to be a relevant model for studying drug transport across the blood-brain barrier.POSTED: 10/16/2024
RAS drug discovery at Frederick National Laboratory reaches lung cancer patients in a clinical trial
A first-in-human study seeks to determine the drug’s safety and tolerability and to detect potential antitumor activity.POSTED: 10/8/2024
Therapeutic strategies to overcome KRAS (OFF) inhibitors resistance
Understanding and overcoming resistance to KRAS G12C inhibitors remains a key focus in the fight against RAS-driven cancers. Experts describe non-genetic methods of resistance to G12C inhibitors that bind to the inactive, GDP-bound form of the protein, and propose the best therapeutic strategy.POSTED: 9/26/2024
Biotech Connector illuminates structural biology research
Structural biology has been in existence since 1912, when German physicist Max Von Laue first directed X-rays at crystallized copper sulfate. He later won a Nobel Prize for this discovery, and other scientists built off his work, developing an X-ray crystallography technique that can illuminate the biological structures of proteins and other biological molecules. Today, structural biologists are not limited to X-ray crystallography; they use a variety of techniques to study biological 3D structures—and as a result they are revealing previously unknown molecular mechanisms that can support drug development. The Biotech Connector held on August 22 at the Frederick National Laboratory for Cancer Research (FNL) showcased the research of three investigators in the Frederick, Md., region who are working at the forefront of structural biology. Tackling drug resistance Ruth Nussinov, Ph.D., senior investigator and head of FNL’s Computational Structural Biology Section , researches structural biology to improve cancer therapy. She POSTED: 9/6/2024
Technology Showcase team blends new and old approaches for 2024 event
Annual event holds new offerings, including an app that allows attendees to connect and arrange one-on-one partnerships.POSTED: 8/29/2024
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