NIH Research Festival

The 21st annual NIH Research Festival was held in October. This intramural event provides a venue for NIH and NCI investigators to showcase their achievements and to explore the innovative research being conducted throughout the NIH Intramural Research Program. DCEG had a substantial presence at this year’s event, with many investigators chairing sessions or presenting posters.

Sharon A. Savage, M.D., Clinical Genetics Branch (CGB), organized and chaired the symposium “Telomeres: The transition from basic science to clinical medicine.” The session highlighted new findings in telomeric repair, telomeres in T cells, and mutations in telomere genes and human disease, as well as the application of telomere length in clinical and epidemiology studies. During the session, Dr. Savage spoke on “Genetic epidemiology of telomeres,” and Blanche P. Alter, M.D., M.P.H. (CGB), presented “Using telomere length to diagnose dyskeratosis congenita.”

Ola Landgren, M.D., Ph.D., an investigator in the Genetic Epidemiology Branch (GEB), and Dr. Charles Rotimi of the National Human Genome Research Institute cochaired the symposium “Racial disparities in chronic disease: Clues to pathogenesis.” The session discussed opportunities to study variable drug response and pathogenesis based on differential distribution of diseases by ethnicity and ancestry. During the session, Dr. Landgren presented “Racial disparity patterns for multiple myeloma and its precursor, monoclonal gammopathy of undetermined significance, provide novel clues to pathogenesis.”

The following DCEG investigators presented posters: Porcia Bradford, M.D. (GEB), on “Cutaneous lymphoma incidence patterns in the United States: A population-based study of 4,064 cases”; Linda Dong, Ph.D., Occupational and Environmental Epidemiology Branch (OEEB), on “Comprehensive analysis of candidate growth, differentiation and apoptosis genes with risk of renal cancer in the Central and Eastern European Renal Cancer Study”; Vladimir Drozdovitch, Ph.D., Radiation Epidemiology Branch (REB), on “Collection and use of individual behavioral and consumption rate data to improve reconstruction of thyroid doses from nuclear weapons tests in Kazakhstan”; Neal D. Freedman, Ph.D., M.P.H., Nutritional Epidemiology Branch, on “Cigarette smoking and subsequent risk of lung carcinoma in men and women”; H. Dean Hosgood, III, Ph.D. (OEEB), on “Portable stove intervention reduces lung cancer mortality risk in lifetime smoky coal users”; Sara Karami, M.P.H. (OEEB), on “Genetic variation within the vitamin D pathway modifies renal cell carcinoma risk”; Jill Koshiol, Ph.D. (GEB), on “Human papillomavirus is absent from esophageal cancer in China”; Kyoung-Mu Lee, Ph.D. (OEEB), on “Differential effects of smoking on lung cancer mortality before and after household stove improvement in Xuanwei, China”; Qizhai Li, Ph.D., Biostatistics Branch, on “Robust genome-wide association studies”; Xueying Liang, Ph.D. (GEB), on “Common genetic variants in candidate genes and risk of familial lymphoma”; Gwen Murphy, Ph.D., M.P.H., Infections and Immunoepidemiology Branch, on “Epstein-Barr virus and gastric adenocarcinoma: A meta-analysis”; Ludmila Prokunina-Olsson, Ph.D., Laboratory of Translational Genomics, on “From genome-wide association studies to molecular phenotypes: A novel SNP within the IGF2BP2 gene is associated with type 2 diabetes and expression of a functional splice form”; and Chu-Ling Yu, Sc.D. (REB), on “Assessment of lifetime cumulative sun exposure using self-administered questionnaire: Reproducibility of two approaches.”

—Cherie M. Vitartas, M.P.H.