Abuzz in the News

The Supreme Court Decision on the Affordable Care Act is here. Slate reported on Robert’s two paragraphs demonstrating “judicial humility” and not undoing what the legislature intended to do. Some nice interactive coverage in the NY Times. Kaiser Health News lists continuing hurdles for the ACA.
Another Supreme Court decision about marriage was announced as I wrote this post, and it seems important to include it as well. Interactive NY Times coverage here.
The Chronicle of Higher Education has an overview of the plans and disputes surrounding NYPL’s iconic Schwarzman Building over the last few years called, The New York Public Library Wars. This fairly disheartening summary is by Scott Sherman of The Nation who has published a book on the subject.
In more positive news for our city’s public library systems, a historic $39 million budget increase for fiscal year 2016 will restore six day service in NYC’s public libraries, more in Library Journal.

Graduation, $1.3 Million Raised at Wall Street Decathlon and More …

June is a month where graduations abound. On Thursday, June 11, a group of teenage cancer patients celebrated at MSK after graduating from high school. The New York Daily News reported on this special event.
Bloomberg Business reports that this year’s annual Wall Street Decathlon, held the weekend of June 13 – June 14 in New York City, raised approximately $1.3 million for cancer research for MSK. More than $6.3 million for cancer research has been raised since the decathlon started in 2009.
A recent online article in the San Francisco Business Times, discusses the licensing deal between Atara Biotherapeutics and MSK for “experimental off-the-shelf cell therapies against cancer and long term viral infections.”
MSK’s Dr. Jedd D. Wolchok and colleague Dr. Michael A. Postow, are featured in an online June 22 OncLive article, that discusses study results recently presented at the 2015 American Society of Clinical Oncology’s Annual Meeting.

Here are a few highlights of cancer research news that have recently caught my attention:

A recent study conducted by Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania found that nearly 10 percent of US women live too far from access to gynecologic cancer care. More on this study published in Gynecologic Oncology.

Researchers at the Annual Meetings of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging demonstrated how a new molecular imaging agent detects prostate cancer that has spread to other tissue. A total of 28 subjects were imaged for this study. For more, read public release.

Scientists at the Washington University in St Louis found a way to disrupt brain tumor cells. While brain cancer is still very difficult to treat, this new discovery may help attack the essence of some of these deadly tumors. The findings were published in Cell Reports.