Category Archives: In the News

New NIH Breast Cancer Research, Outreach Increases HPV Completion, Genes Essential for Cellular Viability and More…

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While browsing the news, these are some of the stories that caught my attention:

  • The NIH has launched new breast cancer research with a focus on prevention. Grant-funded investigators will study risk factors for breast cancer in racially and ethnically diverse populations.
  • A joint study by UT Southwestern Medical Center and Parkland Health Hospital System has found that outreach increases completion of HPV vaccination series by adolescent girls. The results are reported in Pediatrics.
  • Scientists at MIT and Harvard have for the first time identified the universe of genes in the human genome essential for the survival and proliferation of human cell lines or cultured human cells. Read more about their discovery in Science.
  • Scientists at the Institute of Cancer Research in the UK have developed a new test to identify patients at risk of suffering a relapse from testicular cancer. Their findings have been published in the journal Clinical Cancer Research
  • The American Cancer Society released new breast cancer screening guidelines. It now calls for women to begin mammograms at 45 years of age and have mammograms every other year starting at the age of 55. For more specifics on the new recommendations, read the following article in JAMA.

In the Blogs and Op-ed Pages

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Catching my attention these past few weeks:

A decision on the Google Books case came out today. The big points are that scanning is transformative and the snippets as used by Google are ok. Here are the storified tweets of Nancy Sims and co. (aka @CopyrightLibn) on the issue while we wait for the more substantial analysis.

An interesting Op-ed item in the NY Times on Sunday discusses stool banking for reseeding the microbiome and mentions a stool banking study here at MSK.

The issue of sexual harassment in science is back in the news following reports that a famous UC Berkeley astronomer had violating sexual harassment policies. After he apologized on Monday, a piece appeared on Inside Higher Ed asking if that was good enough. A university investigation found the professor guilty of violating their policies, but the university also said it was difficult to fire Dr. Marcy. He resigned on Wednesday after colleagues called for his departure. According to the NY Times, he had been placed on probation over the summer but it had not been announced publicly. San Francisco Chronicle covers the story here. The story was all over blogs and social media. Last Sunday, Michael Eisen, posted an angry discussion of Berkeley’s lack response and critiqued the University’s sexual harassment training.

Breast Cancer, Immunotherapy, and Cancer Care Outcomes

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Surfing the web retrieved these selected informational items:

  • A series of comments regarding an essay entitled “The Breast Cancer Gene and Me” (NY Times Sunday Review, Sep 27) included one by Dr. Kenneth Offit, Chief, Clinical Genetics Service from MSK.