Tuesday, December 16, 2008

FSSHH will return after the holidays. (January sometime)

Yoonju Cho will now be in charge of organizing FSSHH on the Homewood Campus!!!

Please talk to Yoonju or Luke Johnson if you want to volunteer to present or get food/drink for one of the happy hours.

Monday, December 1, 2008

NEXT FSSHH: Holiday Extravaganza!

As the final FSSHH of this semester, and given the season, I think it makes sense to make it a holiday extravaganza. If you have ideas for food/drink fitting for such an event, please let me know: luke.johnson AT jhu.edu

Dec 5, 2008
-- Jacob Koskimaki

Location: Med School Talbot Library (Traylor 709)

Title: A Peptidomic approach to curing breast cancer

Abstract: Breast cancer is the most commonly diagnosed female malignancy in the United States, proving fatal to nearly 40,000 people in 2007 with 180,000 additional diagnoses. Angiogenesis or neovascularization, the process of new blood vessel formation from pre-existing microvasculature, involves interactions between several types of cells including endothelial cells (ECs), and stromal cells. We previously introduced a novel systematic methodology to identify putative endogenous antiangiogenic peptides and validated these predictions in vitro in human umbilical vein endothelial cell (HUVEC) proliferation and migration assays [1]. These peptides are derived from several protein families including type IV collagen, thrombospondin domain-containing proteins, and CXC chemokines. Based on the results from the in vitro screening, we have evaluated the ability of several peptides selected from the different families to suppress angiogenesis in breast cancer orthotopic xenograft models in severe combined immunodeficient (SCID) mice using MDA-MB-231 human breast cancer cells. We have demonstrated significant suppression of tumor growth in vivo, indicating the potential of these peptides as novel breast cancer therapeutics.