Cancer Research

On any given day, microscopist Susan Lea, D.Phil., and her team at NCI at Frederick collect more data than can fit on any standard hard drive, creating a challenge for data storage and analysis. Their average data collection is 5 terabytes, a quantity roughly 20 times the storage capacity of a 256-gigabyte laptop or the equivalent of storing…

Investigators from the Frederick National Laboratory for Cancer Research will share their latest work regarding the use of pre-clinical models for compound screening and tumor characterization, bioinformatics and technology initiatives, among other topics, at the American Association for Cancer Research 2022 Annual Meeting. More than 30…

The classical RAS family of proteins functions as molecular switches at the cell’s plasma membrane where it cycles between an active and inactive state. The active state initiates a cascade of events that promote downstream signaling to regulate cellular functions, such as cell proliferation. Mutations and dysregulation of the RAS-RAF-MEK-ERK…

The Frederick National Laboratory will host a new training program in Frederick, Maryland, September 12-16 for cancer researchers who want to build expertise in cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM). Cryo-EM is a microscopy technique where samples are flash-frozen and bombarded with electrons to generate images. The resulting high-resolution…

Scientists have identified a genetic variant that can predict whether immunotherapy drugs called immune checkpoint inhibitors, used to treat cancer, might fail in certain patients. The team’s findings, which appear in Lancet Oncology, point to HLA-A*03, an allele (a form of a gene) found on chromosome 6 of human DNA. The presence of HLA-A*03 in…

Frederick National Laboratory (FNL) scientists, led by Stephan Stern, Ph.D., and their colleagues have created a novel imaging agent that, with further development, might detect deadly pancreatic cancer at its earliest, most-treatable stages and thereby improve the prognosis for patients. Pancreatic cancer has a high mortality rate because it…

A key to understanding KRAS-driven cancers and the role of mutant RAS proteins and to discover new therapeutic possibilities is to better understand how RAS behaves on the cell membrane. Investigating RAS in the context of membranes is somewhat challenging using conventional computational or experimental techniques. In a partnership with…

A pilot study suggests a near real-time method of imaging prostate cancer to aid in organ-sparing treatments, and an innovative as well as accurate way to see whether the cancer has spread. These dual findings stem from research reported in Molecular Imaging and Biology on a relatively new radiotracer used in dynamic positron emission…

One way to improve the success rate for new cancer drugs might be to test them in a three dimensional (3D) environment that mimics real life better than the two-dimensional (2D) set-up of a flat culture dish, according to a new study that examined thousands of lung cancer proteins grown under both conditions. About 95 percent of…

Think of a tumor and you might envision a disorganized mass. But tumors can also form a thin sheet over a surface. These can be hard to treat, especially when the surface has wrinkles and crevices. But there may be a new approach. Solid tumors can be successfully removed with surgery and residual cells destroyed. But cancers like the asbestos-…