Bench to Bedside

We're excited to share that Charles has been appointed as a full time member of the Children's Oncology Group (COG) Soft Tissue Sarcoma Committee. This committee designs clinical and translational trials for rhabdomyosarcoma and other soft tissue sarcomas. This appointment follows other COG activities in recent years including ad hoc participation in the Soft Tissue Sarcoma Committee since 2001. Also, Charles has also been an awardee of the COG Young Investigator Award (2001) and a recipient of the COG Translational Research Award (2001-2002). The results of the latter are published as a COG report entitled, "Rhabdomyosarcomas utilize developmental, myogenic growth factors for disease advantage". This study was the foundation upon which our more recent from-the-bench-towards-bedside efforts have been focused. Our lab looks forward to being able to contribute more to clinical and translational trial design as new, molecularly-targeted drugs become available to pediatric patients.

Collaborator Andrew Brack visits GCCRI

Friend and collaborator, Dr. Andrew S. Brack, gave a terrific seminar presentation at GCCRI today. Andrew is an Assistant Professor at the Center for Regenerative Medicine at MGH, as well as a member of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute. A recent trainee of our other valued colleague, Dr. Thomas A. Rando at Stanford, Andrew has established a productive independent laboratory of his own and is a young rising star in the muscle biology field. As ever, the cross-pollination between muscle cancer biologists and muscle biologists leads to interesting conversations, novel ideas, and new outlooks on ways to treat muscle cancer. We are grateful to Andrew for making the trip to San Antonio and giving such a great seminar on satellite cell (muscle stem cell) renewal.

[ PICTURED: Andrew (left) with Koichi (right) at the Alamo ]