This summer, Governor Hogan announced his Maryland Cancer Moonshot Initiative to accelerate comprehensive cutting-edge research “to detect, prevent, treat, and find a cure for cancer.” Exposure to air pollution is of growing concern. It is classified as a known human carcinogen. Strong associations between air pollution exposure and lung cancer mortality are well established, and levels of lung cancer are increasing throughout the US, including Maryland. On August 1, 2022, $1.7 million from the Cancer Moonshot grant was awarded to the Mass Spectrometry and Proteomics Facility, directed by Dr. Robert Cole (Assistant Professor in the School of Medicine’s Department of Biological Chemistry). The award is for purchasing two new mass spectrometer systems to advance the facility’s capacity and capabilities in assessing an individual’s exposure level to tobacco and other air pollutants. With support from the Maryland CRF and in collaboration with Dr. John Groopman, (Professor of Preventive Medicine, Department of Environmental Health and Engineering in the Bloomberg School of Public Health and Associate Director for Population Sciences in the Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center), Drs. Cole and Groopman recently published a mass spectrometry-based method to detect air pollutants in human blood. Their goal is to use this method to establish a panel of exposure biomarkers that correlate with high cancer risk, especially lung cancer, and develop effective strategies to dramatically reduce the individual’s risk of developing cancer. Moreover, the Mass Spectrometry and Proteomics Facility supports the clinical and basic science cancer research programs across all three Hopkins campuses and four major research centers, including of over 30 labs per year in the Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center and several labs at the University of Maryland, Morgan State University and other Maryland academic and private institutions. The Governor Hogan’s Maryland Cancer Moonshot Initiative allows our facility to continue developing and providing cost-effective, state-of-the-art novel proteomic applications to accelerate the cancer research of investigators at Johns Hopkins and intuitions across Maryland.
Chris Mahone receives Maryland Stem Cell Research Fund internship (Goley Lab)
Kyle Cavagnini receives a FASEB science policy internship (Wolfgang Lab)
Congratulations to our Leader…
The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2021 was awarded jointly to David Julius and Ardem Patapoutian “for their discoveries of receptors for temperature and touch”. Our own Michael J. Caterina, then a postdoctoral fellow in the Julius lab, conducted an unbiased functional screen based on the assumption that a single gene can confer capsaicin sensitivity in cells that are normally insensitive to capsaicin. To find this putative gene, Julius and coworkers made a cDNA library from rodent dorsal root ganglia that contain the cell bodies of the capsaicin-activated sensory neurons. Capsaicin-insensitive cells were transfected with batches of these cDNAs and eventually a single cDNA clone was isolated that could confer responsiveness to capsaicin [17] (Figure 1A).
Understanding the action of capsaicin has since provided insights into pain signaling which has remained a focus of Michael Caterina’s laboratory. For Q&A, click HERE.