New LICR Administration Structure

In the course of determining the succession of Dr. Lloyd J. Old as Director and Chief Executive Officer, the senior Administration and Board of the Ludwig Institute came to recognize that changes to the administrative structure of the Institute would facilitate the future management of the Institute’s global and multi-faceted activities. Accordingly, several changes to the Institute’s administration structure have been made. Read more about these changes, plus the biographies of the new Associate Directors - George D. Demetri, Richard D. Kolodner, Andrew J.G. Simpson and Jonathan C.A. Skipper:

Science in Russia and the James R. Kerr Program

Dr. Mikhail Gelfand, an investigator in the LICR's James R. Kerr Program, has just published an excellent article on science in Russia ('Doing Science in Uncertain Times') in the Public Library of Science's Biology Journal. The problems of 'brain drain' and access to international collaborations, which are discussed with great insight in this piece, are two aspects that the LICR's James R. Kerr Program seeks to improve in countries - like Russia - that are scientifically talented but have had limited opportunities to establish international collaborations. Go to the full text article at PLoS Biology.

NY-ESO-1/ISCOMATRIX Melanoma Vaccine

In 1995, LICR made the commitment to evaluate the therapeutic applications of its research discoveries for human benefit. Since then, the Institute has established the infrastructure, processes and procedures for taking laboratory discoveries into the clinic. Once identified, study agents for use in humans are produced, clinical protocols are developed, regulatory filings are prepared and submitted and ethics committee review is obtained; a complex set of procedures undertaken and/or coordinated by the LICR's Office of Clinical Trials Management (OCTM). Often it is necessary to identify and negotiate industry interactions before clinical trials are performed. A current and fitting example of this process is the 'story' of the NY-ESO-1/ISCOMATRIX™ cancer vaccine. Read more here.

Traveling to the US Office or Branches

Please note that the USA has tightened procedures for entering the country. With effect from 26 October 2004, all visitors to the USA will be required to have a machine-readable passport. If you do not hold a machine-readable passport, you must hold a valid visa, and applying for this visa can be a lengthy procedure. Therefore, we strongly recommend that if you are planning to visit the New York Office, or the New York or San Diego Branches at any time after 26th October 2004, you should make sure that you have a machine-readable passport or allow sufficient time to get a visa.

LICR News

Staff Promotions
To Associate Member: Dr. Achim Jungbluth (New York); Drs. Aristidis Moustakas and Johan Ericsson (Uppsala); Dr. Luiz Reis (Sâo Paulo); Dr. Freddy Radtke (Lausanne); Drs. Marc Achen and Matthias Ernst (Melbourne).
To Assistant Member: Dr. Jonas Muhr (Stockholm).
To Senior Investigator: Dr. Didier Colau (Brussels).
Congratulations to:
Dr. Johan Ericsson (Uppsala Branch) for winning the Fernstrom Young Scientist Award.
Dr. Buzz Baum (University College London Branch) who has just been awarded one of the prestigious (and very competitive) EMBO Young Investigator Awards.
Dr. Marketa Zvelebil (University College London Branch) on the recent publication of Dictionary of Bioinformatics and Computational Biology by Wiley Liss. Dr. Zvelebil co-edited this very comprehensive dictionary; the first to provide clear definitions of the fundamental concepts of bioinformatics and computational biology.
Dr. Cécile Chalouni (New Haven Affiliate Center) who has won Nature's 'Cell of the Month' contest. The image, of antibody A33 - a focus of LICR's Antibody Targeting Program - in colon cells, will appear in the November issues of the journals "Nature Cell Biology" and "Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology". More importantly, it will soon appear in the header of LICR's website.
Dr. Elwood V. Jensen (University of Chicago and University of Cincinnati College of Medicine), former member of the LICR Scientific Committee, who has been awarded the prestigious Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research.
LICR in the news:
Two PNAS studies from the Melbourne and New York Branches on immunological monitoring and clinical trial results of the NY-ESO-1/ISCOMATRIX cancer vaccine received international television and newspaper coverage (see accompanying NewsLink article).
A study on centromere protein, CENP-A, by Dr. Don Cleveland at the San Diego Branch, published in Nature, was covered on several medical news websites (PMID).
Johan Ericsson was featured in a national Swedish newspaper for receiving the Fernstrom Young Scientist Award, and results from his group’s PNAS paper on YY1, a novel regulator of p53 function (PMID), was covered in the local Uppsala media (newspaper, television and radio), in the main national daily newspaper, and on several medical news websites.
Grants
New grant opportunities from the International Union Against Cancer (UICC), of which LICR is a long-standing member. See www.uicc.org for more details.
UICC Translational Cancer Research Fellowships (TCRF) funded by Novartis, Switzerland and the National Cancer Institute, USA.
Duration: 12 months
Value: USD 55,500
Closing date: 1 December 2004
UICC ACS International Fellowships for Beginning Investigators (ACSBI) funded by the American Cancer Society.
Duration: 12 months
Average value: USD 40,000
Closing date: 1 December 2004
UICC Yamagiwa-Yoshida Memorial UICC International Cancer Study Grants (YY) funded by Kyowa Hakko Kogyo Company, Ltd., Toray Industries Incorporated, Tokyo, and the Japan National Committee for UICC.
Duration: 3 months
Average value: USD 10,000
Closing date: 1 January 2005

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