International Team to Evaluate Traditional Chinese Medicine for Cancer

NCI's Office of Cancer Complementary and Alternative Medicine (OCCAM) is supporting the development of an international center that partners the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston with the Cancer Hospital, Fudan University in Shanghai, China. The grant is the first step in developing a center to study the use of traditional Chinese medicine for cancer treatment and symptom management. The research teams will investigate herbal and natural product treatments that target the disease and disease-related symptoms and outcomes, the effectiveness of acupuncture on specific symptoms in cancer patients, and the biobehavioral effects of qigong and other mind/body-based therapies in cancer patients. This is the first NCI grant to support such an international partnership to study an alternative medical system. For more information about OCCAM, go to: http://cancer.gov/cam.

Winn Leads NCI's Genetic Epidemiology Research Branch

Dr. Deborah Winn has been appointed chief of the NCI Epidemiology and Genetics Research Program's (EGRP) Clinical and Genetic Epidemiology Research Branch (CGERB). Dr. Winn had been CGERB's acting chief and was senior epidemiologist for tobacco and cancer control in EGRP. She also served at one time as acting associate director of EGRP. Dr. Winn has been instrumental in guiding the EGRP-funded Cancer Genetics Network and has been very involved in helping CGERB develop initiatives in gene-gene and gene-environment interactions. She is known nationally and internationally for her work and writings on smokeless tobacco and the etiology of oral cancer. She is NCI program coordinator for the Long Island Breast Cancer Study Project, and has been a key member of the Health Disparities Research Coordinating Committee in the Division of Cancer Control and Population Sciences, of which EGRP is a part.

Dr. Sheue-yann Cheng Receives Mentor Award

Dr. Sheue-yann Cheng in the Laboratory of Molecular Biology in NCI's Center for Cancer Research is this year's recipient of the Abbott Thyroid Research Clinical Fellowship Mentor Award from the Endocrine Society. Abstracts on the molecular genetics of thyroid carcinoma by two of her fellows, Drs. Caroline Kim and Yasuhito Kato, were selected from hundreds of submissions to compete at the oral presentation for the mentor award. Dr. Kim won the competition. The mentor award was presented to Dr. Cheng at the June 18 plenary session of the annual meeting of the Endocrine Society. The award provides $30,000 for unrestricted use for Dr. Cheng's research.