Monthly Archives: September 2016

Friday Announcements, Exploration and Fun from the Internet

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Yesterday the publication eLife announced that, starting January 2017, they will begin charging a publication fee of $2,500. For more information, see this statement about  creating a financially stable future for eLife. Visit the archive on PMC here.

New York Magazine has a long piece about information addiction by Andrew Sullivan called I Used to Be a Human Being.

According to an odd item in the Atlantic, which seems less crazy than it sounds once you read it, a former urologic surgeon used a 3D printed kidney to explore anecdotal stories of patients passing small kidney stones after riding roller coasters. The PubMed abstract of the paper describing the experiment he and a colleague conducted is available here.

Fat Advantage, Wheels, and a Citation Laureate at MSK this Week in the News

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Pediatric oncologist, Dr. Joannes Zakrzewski, MD, was awarded a $250,000 grant from Hyundai Hope on Wheels to improve care and treatment for kids with cancer. HHOW is presenting 24 recipients throughout the country with a total of $7.5M in 2016 in award grants. This organization has been funding childhood cancer research since 1988 and so far, has awarded $115M for pediatric cancer research. On Tuesday, September 27, the Scholar Grant was presented with a Handprint Ceremony featuring local young cancer patients’ handprints on a canvas.

Dr. Craig Thompson, MD was honored earlier this month by Thomson Reuters as one of their 2016 Citation Laureates in Physiology or Medicine for his work on explaining how CD28 CTLA-4 regulate T cell activation and therefore modulate immune response. Since 2002, Thomson Reuters Citation Laureates have been awarded in the following Nobel categories: Physiology or Medicine, Physics, Chemistry, and Economics. “All the researchers have demonstrated themselves, by their contributions and citation records, to be ‘of Nobel class’ and worthy of future Nobel recognition. And many of their Citation Laureates do accomplish that, in the past 14 years 39 of Thomson Reuters selected laureates went on to win that ultimate prize, 9 in the same year that they were named Citation Laureates and 16 within two years. Continue reading →

Antimicrobial Resistance Diagnostic Challenge

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The NIH and BARDA are sponsoring a prize competition in which up to $20 million will be awarded to contestants who develop new innovative laboratory diagnostic tools that detect and distinguish antibiotic resistant bacteria.

The challenge, structured in three phases, reaches out to researchers and innovators from both public and private sectors, as well as those outside of biomedical disciplines. It seeks rapid, point-of-need in vitro diagnostic research and product development which, over time, could lead to the development of more sensitive, accurate, robust and cost-effective assay approaches and devices for clinical diagnosis. Phases include:

  1. Submission – Up to 20 proposals will receive up to $50,000 and eligibility for phase 2
  2. Delivery of Prototype and Analytical Data – Up to 10 semifinalists will receive up to $100,000 and eligibility for phase 3
  3. Performance testing in CLIA-Certified Laboratories – $18,000,000 or more will be split among a maximum of 3 awardees

Proposals are due at 11:59pm on January 9, 2017. For more information, see the Antimicrobial Resistance Diagnostic Challenge.