The Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research reaches a turning point at the end of 2005. Dr. Lloyd J. Old is stepping down after 17 years as Scientific Director and Professor A. Munro Neville, the Associate Scientific Director and a member of staff for over 30 years, is retiring as well. See here for important upcoming changes to LICR Management.
Professor Munro Neville has made many substantial contributions to the understanding and control of cancer and has also made a great personal commitment to the international scientific and medical communities through his active involvement in professional societies, editorial boards, and national and international committees and task-forces in Australia, Europe and North America. Read a summary of his career.
Within LICR, Munro has held the positions of Branch Director (the first LICR Branch, located in Sutton, UK), Scientific and Medical Administrator (which encompassed several separate Offices including Academic Review and Intellectual Property), Director of the Office of Intellectual Property (which he created), and LICR Associate Director. Here he reminisces about LICR and his own role in its history with Dr. Sarah White (Director, Office of Communications).
The Scientific Directorate has announced that the TGF-beta Program, directed by Dr. Carl-Henrik (Calle) Heldin (Director, Uppsala Branch), is set to receive further resources to develop and validate specific TGF-β antagonists and explore their possible clinical utility. Read a summary here.
Quiz question: how many LICR Branches have existed in the Institute’s 30+ year history? With 2005 bringing the closure of the London St Mary’s Branch and a celebration of the Melbourne Branch’s 25th Anniversary, take a look at how LICR’s global footprint has changed over the course of three decades.
From the laboratories of Drs. Karen Oegema and Arshad Desai at the San Diego Branch
Monen J, Maddox PS, Hyndman F, Oegema K, Desai A. Differential role of CENP-A in the segregation of holocentric C. elegans chromosomes during meiosis and mitosis.Nat Cell Biol. 2005 Nov 6; [Epub ahead of print] PMID: 16273096
From the laboratory of Dr. Bart Vanhaesebroeck at the UCL Branch
Bilancio A, Okkenhaug K, Camps M, Emery JL, Ruckle T, Rommel C, Vanhaesebroeck B. Key role of the p110{delta} isoform of PI3K in B cell antigen and IL4 receptor signalling - comparative analysis of genetic and pharmacological interference with p110{delta} function in B cells. Blood. 2005 Sep 22; [Epub ahead of print] PMID: 16179367
Members of the Cancer Vaccine Collaborative have been very active in the International Society for Biological Therapy of Cancer (ISBTC) and the recently formed Cancer Vaccine Consortium (CV Consortium), two organizations representing the academic and biotech/pharmaceutical industry cancer vaccine stakeholders through the formation of the Cancer Vaccine Clinical Trials Working Group (CVCTWG).
Dr. Jonathan Skipper (Executive Director of Intellectual Property & Licensing) co-chaired a Plenary Session on ‘New Agents in Development’, Drs. Vincenzo Cerundolo (Oxford Affiliate Center), Weisan Chen (Melbourne Branch), Pedro Romero (Lausanne Branch) and Pierre Coulie (Brussels Affiliate Center) gave oral presentations of their work, while Drs. Sacha Gnjatic (New York Branch) and Padmanee Sharma (LICR Clinical Trials at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center) presented posters.
* The LICR/CRI Cancer Vaccine Collaborative (CVC) members recently participated in a blinded study assessing the reproducibility of elispot assays used in the monitoring of immunological responses to cancer vaccines. There was a total of 35 participating laboratories, and eight of these were CVC laboratories.
LICR Affiliate, Dr. Ira Mellman (New Haven Affiliate Center), who is one of the three Americans just elected as Associate Members of the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO).
Melbourne Branch on its 25th Anniversary.
To Associate Member: Dr. Bart Vanhaesebroeck (UCL Branch)
Dr. George Demetri (Executive Director for Clinical and Translational Research) was interviewed in a recent BusinessWeek article (November 21, p 135) on start-up biotechnology companies.
The LICR Office of Clinical Trials Management (OCTM) would like to announce that all LICR-sponsored clinical trials are now registered on the National Institute of Health’s ‘ClinicalTrials.gov’ database. The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) has stated that its member journals will not publish results from a clinical trial unless the trial was registered on ClinicalTrials.gov before September 13, 2005 (link). Although this requirement applies - at present - to later-phase clinical trials, the OCTM initiated this project to ensure compliance for early-phase clinical trials and also show LICR’s support for the push for public disclosure and accurate recording of clinical trial sponsorship.
You can use the search term, “Ludwig Institute” (quotation marks are important!), any time to see a list of active LICR-sponsored trials, either currently recruiting patients or closed to accrual
A new spin-off company has been created to further the development of therapies from the LICR’s Angiogenesis Program. Lymphatix, formed principally by LICR Affiliate Dr. Kari Alitalo, was launched in November with Helsinki University Funds providing one million euros to initiate operations. Lymphatix plans to develop and commercialize products based on vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) -C, discovered by Dr. Alitalo, and VEGF-D, discovered by Drs. Marc Achen and Steven Stacker from the LICR Melbourne Branch. LICR holds the patents for both growth factors. Of particular interest to the company is the use of VEGF-C and VEGF-D in the treatment of human conditions with impaired blood supply (e.g. heart ischemia) or lymphoid drainage (e.g. edema).
A meeting of some of the members of the LICR Antibody Program was held in the New York Office on December 1st, to discuss progress with the MX-35 antibody. Attendees included Drs. Serhiy Souchelnytskyi (Uppsala Branch), Lloyd Old, Achim Jungbluth and Gerd Ritter (New York Branch), Steve Larsen, Peter Smyth-Jones and Chaitanya Divgi from the (New York- MSKCC Affiliate Center, and Dr. Ivan Gout (James R. Kerr Investigator, Ukraine). ‘Remote attendees’ (on webcast) included Dr. Ulf Hellman (Uppsala Branch), Dr. Valeriy Filonenko (James R. Kerr Investigator, Ukraine), Dr. Christoph Renner (Zurich Affiliate Center) and collaborators in Brazil.
It has been announced that PIramed Ltd, a spin-off company from PI 3-kinase research conducted by former UCL Branch Director, Dr. Michael D. Waterfield, Dr. Peter Parker, Cancer Research UK (formerly at the UCL Branch), and Dr. Paul Workman, Institute for Cancer Research has entered a research and development collaboration with one of the world’s leading biotechnology companies, Genentech, Inc. This is one of the largest preclinical collaborations ever signed by a UK biotechnology company. PIramed will conduct preclinical research with Genentech and Genentech will be solely responsible for clinical development, regulatory approvals, manufacturing and commercialisation. Through separate agreements, PIramed has an exclusive licence to novel isoform-specific PI 3-kinase inhibitors from the tri-partite collaboration between LICR, Cancer Research UK and the Institute of Cancer Research and also Yamanouchi Pharmaceutical Company (now Astellas Pharma Inc.). PIramed also has an exclusive licence for screening PI 3-kinase from LICR.