Spotlight

FY12 Spending Debate Comes to a Close

Congress completed, and the President signed into law, the FY12 appropriations bill. The $915 billion spending bill wraps up the remaining nine appropriations measures. The bill provides funding for programs at the Department of Health and Human Services, including the National
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Rep. Rush Holt’s (D-NJ) Editorial in Most Recent Science

Science 16 September 2011:
Vol. 333 no. 6049 p. 1549
DOI: 10.1126/science.1211494
EDITORIAL:

Dueling Visions for Science

Rush Holt
Rush Holt is the U.S. Representative for New Jersey's 12th Congressional District and has a doctoral degree in physics.

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Using the Immune System to Fight Cancer - 7/19/06

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Dr. James Allison
Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center

Dr. Allison is a leader in the field of immunology, particularly in developing ways to help the immune system recognize and destroy cancer cells. For the past 40 years, scientists and clinicians have tried to harness the immune system to attack cancer in order to avoid the destructive side effects of conventional therapies.

Dr. Allison has discovered a new approach to cancer immunotherapy. His technique releases a natural brake on the immune system to unleash an assault on the cancer. Dr. Allison's work focuses on a molecule called CTLA-4 that is found on the surface of T lymphocytes. CTLA-4 serves as the "brakes" of the immune system, limiting the expansion of activated T cells. Dr. Allison believes that the CTLA-4 receptor is important in shutting down the body's autoimmune response - that is, making sure the body doesn't attack its own tissues. Because cancers arise from a person's own cells, they survive because of the body's reluctance to attack itself.