LICR Strategic Review

In June 2004, the LICR Board of Directors requested a strategic review of the global LICR enterprise. Strategic reviews are conducted periodically to refine, re-define and/or realign goals, priorities and resources in the context of an organization’s dynamic environment. Consequently, management and the Scientific Directorate are now reviewing the Institute’s overall mission, model, infrastructure and resources. Senior scientific staff, in addition to management, will also be involved in the process. Read more here.

São Paulo Branch: Human Papillomavirus Research to Vaccine

In the early 1990’s, Dr. Luisa Villa initiated a study of the epidemiology of human papillomavirus (HPV), responsible for 90% of cervical cancer, the number one cause of cancer-related death in women in the developing world. Dr. Villa’s findings led to changes in the way cervical cancer is tested, and also to pharmaceutical giant Merck asking Dr. Villa to lead the Phase II trial of their anti-HPV vaccine, the results of which were published in The Lancet Oncology in April. The research and the very real contributions LICR has made to women’s health are described further here.

Angiogenesis Program Meeting attendees

The Australian Federal Minister for Science, Education and Training, the Honourable Brendan Nelson (left) presents a gift (a painting by an Australian Aboriginal artist) to Dr. Ricardo Brentani, Branch Director, upon a visit to the LICR São Paulo Branch on April 25th. The Minister, an M.D., is interested in the Melbourne Branch's cancer vaccine work, and requested the visit after reading about São Paulo's HPV vaccine research (see accompanying NewsLink story).

London St Mary's Branch Farewell

As of July 31, the London St Mary’s Branch will close in order to facilitate the consolidation of Institute resources in London. In its 18 years of operation, the Branch has made outstanding advances in the fields of molecular virology, tumor suppressor gene and oncogene research. Here, Dr. Paul Farrell reminisces about the Branch history and talks about some of his future plans.

Also, read a tribute from Scientific Committee Member Dr. George Klein (Karolinska Institute) about Dr. Farrell and his work.

Angiogenesis Program Meeting attendees

LICR St Mary's Branch - Ms. Julie Curtis (Administrator), Dr. Paul Farrell (Branch Director), Mrs Paul (Diana) Farrell, and Group Leaders, Drs. Xin Lu (now UCL Branch Director), Martin Allday, Tim Crook and Roger Watson.

Angiogenesis Program Meeting

The most recent meeting of the Angiogenesis Group, marking the 10th Anniversary of the Program was hosted by Dr. Ralf Pettersson (Stockholm Branch Director) on March 30th and 31st, and was designed to allow the Program Members to present novel findings and exchange ideas for future collaborative studies. Read a brief report here.

LICR News

Nature, Nature, Nature…papers that is: Dr. Freddy Radtke at the Lausanne Branch (‘Notch/g-secretase inhibition turns proliferative cells in intestinal crypts and adenomas into goblet cells’), Dr. Stefan Constantinescu at the Brussels Branch (‘A unique clonal JAK2 mutation leading to constitutive signalling causes polycythaemia vera’) and Dr. Bing Ren at the San Diego Branch (‘A high resolution map of active promoters in the human genome’).

The Victoria State Government Minister for Health, Ms Bronwyn Pike, visited the New York Office (June 24th) and was full of praise for the important role that LICR fulfils in Melbourne’s research community.

The PNAS paper published by Davis et al. (Melbourne and New York Branches) in 2004, ‘Recombinant NY-ESO-1 protein with ISCOMATRIX adjuvant induces broad integrated antibody and CD4(+) and CD8(+) T cell responses in humans’ (see NewsLink June 2004) was one of the top 100 articles accessed on the PNAS website.

‘The Dictionary of Bioinformatics and Computational Biology’, co-authored by Dr. Marketa Zvelebil (London Branch), was recently given the ringing endorsement of: “Readers of all constituencies within the realms of biology, computing, and medical information processing will be well served by this dictionary, which will undoubtedly remain a valuable reference for the upcoming years.”

Staff Promotions and Appointments

To Associate Member: Dr. Weisan Chen (Melbourne Branch)

LICR in the news:

The Villa et al. (HPV vaccine) paper published in The Lancet Oncology in April (see accompanying NewsLink article) received international print media attention, and television coverage in the UK and Brazil.

Drs. Maréne Landstrom and Johan Ericsson (Uppsala Branch) each received coverage on health/medicine internet sites for their studies on Smad7 protein levels predicting prostate cancer therapy response and a new control mechanism for SREBPs (which gives new targets for cholesterol-lowering drugs), respectively.

Dr. Peter Gibbs (Melbourne Branch) was featured in the Australian media for his study on the connection between bowel cancer and diabetes.

Dr. Jean-Charles Cerottini, Director of the Lausanne Branch, was featured in the Sunday magazine, 24 Heures in April. In a full-page interview, Dr. Cerottini gave his views on winning the war on cancer and described the unique mix in Lausanne of the LICR Branch, ISREC (Swiss Institute for Cancer Research), Lausanne University, the Polytechnic School, and CHUV (Centre Hospitalier Universitaire du Vaudois) where the Branch conducts its clinical trials.