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AIDS has commandeered media headlines, instigated public awareness, and garnered funding in more profound ways than any other disease in history. Bolstered by a tenacious activist community, HIV/AIDS research has blazed trails empirically, politically, and even philosophically. Since this disease took hold some 15 years ago, new insights and understanding in immunology, cytokine biology, antiviral research, vaccine development, and gene therapy have emerged from HIV/AIDS research laboratories a

Editor's Note: In this issue, The Scientist focuses on the status of cancer research in the United States. The articles below and on pages 6-9 present glimpses of the latest advances. The article beginning at right describes how cancer and AIDS research are related. The article on page 10 offers a look at thyroid cancer treatments from the perspectives of patient and scientist. Commentary (12) and Opinion (13) are by prominent cancer experts. Profession (14-15) assesses the outlook for cancer

The NCI Cooperative Breast Cancer Tissue Resource can provide researchers with access to more than 9,000 cases of formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded primary breast cancer tissues, with associated pathology and clinical data. Tissue and data area available from patients treated in four diverse geographic areas of the United States. Tissue sections are prespared to meet the criteria of individual research protocols. All specimens are reviewed to verify the pathological diagnosis. Clinical data inc

Editor's Note: Contributing Editor Ricki Lewis was diagnosed with thyroid cancer in 1993 and had standard treatment. She will be taking a recently approved test this summer and hopes to participate in the clinical trial of another, both discussed below. Michael Levine When a lump in the neck turns out to be thyroid cancer, many doctors announce, "If you had to get cancer, this is the one to get." Fortunately, treatment is straightforward and effective, but follow-up testing can be uncomfort

DISEASE RESEARCH SUPPORT In response to a perceived need for increased clinical research funding, the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation recently established the Doris Duke Distinguished Clinical Scientist Award Program. The Foundation will give $600,000 a year for five years to four research teams studying either cancer, AIDS, heart disease, or sickle cell anemia and related blood disorders. According to Alan Altschuler, the Foundation's acting program director for medical research, the clinic

p53 has emerged as one of the top targets in the war against cancer.

In the last two months of 1998, the National Cancer Institute announced seven new initiatives set to cost a total of $343 million over the next five years: As part of a new report entitled The National Cancer Institute Tobacco Research Implementation Plan, Priorities for Tobacco Research Beyond the Year 2000, two initiatives, the "Transdisciplinary Tobacco Research Centers" and "Research in State and Community Tobacco Control Interventions" programs, will be funded at $142 million over five y

Even the most commonly mutated tumor suppressor genes, such as p53 and Rb, malfunction in only about half of all tumor types. However, excess telomerase appears in all major cancers. So why don't more pharmaceutical strategies exist to block the enzyme that, in excess, dictates cells to divide ad infinitum? The answer may be twofold, Serge Lichtsteiner, a researcher at Menlo Park, Calif.-based Geron Corp., reported during an interview following his presentation at a recent New York Academy of

Protein structure information from X-ray crystallography and bioinformatics has given biochemists a potentially potent anticancer target: specific segments of DNA's double helix. But, as a group of biochemists at a fall conference sponsored by the National Foundation for Cancer Research agreed, knowing the structure of proteins and protein complexes that bind to DNA segments and turn genes off and on may be only half the battle. Proteins or large synthetic molecules should, in theory, be able t

December 10 marked another "major milestone" in molecular biology. An international consortium of scientists announced that they have obtained the first complete genetic blueprint of a complex animal. C. elegans Researchers from Washington University in St. Louis and the Sanger Centre in Cambridge, U.K., have sequenced the 97 million-base genome of Caenorhabditis elegans, biologists' favorite worm. The product of a nine-year effort, the C. elegans sequence joins those of E. coli and yeast in

In early December, Emory University in Atlanta agreed to pay $66,400 in fines and change its operating procedures in response to the December 1997 death of Elizabeth Griffin, a 22-year-old worker at its Yerkes Regional Primate Center. Griffin contracted herpes B virus, common in Old World macaques, when she was hit in the eye with fecal material, urine, or saliva while transferring a rhesus monkey to a cage.1 Though rare in humans, B virus is often lethal unless treated early with antiviral dru

Ferid Murad, M.D., Ph.D., just won the Nobel Prize for physiology or medicine for his work on nitric oxide. Francis Collins, M.D., Ph.D., heads the National Human Genome Research Institute. And 49 investigators who hold both M.D. and Ph.D. degrees are funded by the prestigious Howard Hughes Medical Institute. What these disparate observations reflect is the rise of the M.D.-Ph.D., whose training and professional pedigree dovetail nicely with two hallmarks of the current biomedical arena: rapid