Congratulations to Dr. Aaron Grossberg who was invited to participate in the NCI Systemic Effects of Cancer Think Tank that was held this April 2024 at the NCI Shady Grove campus in Maryland. The Think Tank invites discussion from experts in cancer cachexia, metastasis, and systems biology to assess the current state of understanding of the systemic effects of cancer and what would be needed to promote and accelerate progress to impact patient outcomes.

Dr. Hatun Duran Cete, postdoctoral scholar in the Schedin lab, has been awarded an appointment with the IRACDA at OHSU training grant. The goal of the IRACDA at OHSU program is to develop a diverse group of highly trained scientists to become leaders in biomedical research and scholarship. Congratulations!

Congratulations to Margaret Haerr, graduate student in the Byrne lab, who was selected give a talk at the AACR 2024 Annual Meeting. Margaret presented her talk titled, "CD40 agonism induces CD4 T cell mediated rejection of MHC I deficient pancreatic tumors" during the New Insights for Therapies Modulating Antitumor T-Cell Responses session.

Congratulations to Tori Schuster, graduate student in the Ruhland lab, who has received a GSO travel award to sponsor her trip to present a talk and poster at the Keystone Symposia Innate Immunity conference. Tori presented her work titled, "Multi-antigen management by dendritic cells within the melanoma microenvironment."

Congratulations to Katie Blise, graduate student in the Coussens lab, whose paper “Machine learning links T-cell function and spatial localization to neoadjuvant immunotherapy and clinical outcome in pancreatic cancer” published in Cancer Immunology Research is the School of Medicine’s Paper of the Month. The study was led by a team including first author Katie Blise, Ph.D. ‘24, computational biologist, Brenden-Colson Center for Pancreatic Care, Jeremy Goecks, Ph.D., associate professor of biomedical engineering, Lisa Coussens, Ph.D., chair and professor of cell, developmental and cancer biology, and senior author Kate Byrne, Ph.D., assistant professor of cell, developmental and cancer biology, OHSU School of Medicine, member of the Knight Cancer Institute and Brenden-Colson Center for Pancreatic Care. Read more here.

Congratulations to Dr. Paige Arneson-Wissink, postdoc in the Grossberg lab, who was selected for an oral presentation and travel award for the 2024 Keystone Symposium on Cachexia and Wasting Syndrome in Cancer and Chronic Diseases for her talk, "PDAC recovery associates with impaired hepatic metabolism, delayed muscle recovery, and decreased activity levels."

The Grossberg lab has several publications to announce:

• "Hepatic Signal Transducer and Activator of Transcription-3 signaling drives early stage pancreatic cancer cachexia via suppressed ketogenesis" in Journal of Cachexia, Sarcopenia and Muscle.
  • Dr. Paige Arneson-Wissink was first author on the paper which was completed in collaboration with Drs. Robert Eil and Alex Bartlett (Postdoc, Eil lab)
• "The Pancreatic Cancer Early Detection (PRECEDE) Study is a Global Effort to Drive Early Detection: Baseline Imaging Findings in High-Risk Individuals" in the Journal of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network.
• "Grb7 ablation in mice improved glycemic control, enhanced insulin signaling and increased abdominal fat mass in females" in Endocrinology.
• "Quantifying the severity of sarcopenia in patients with cancer of the head and neck" in Clinical Nutrition.

The Lind lab has published a paper featuring Patrick Flynn (graduate student) as first author and Dr. Anupriya Agarwal as co-author. The paper is titled, "Leukemic mutation FLT3-ITD is retained in dendritic cells and disrupts their homeostasis leading to expanded Th17 frequency" in Frontiers in Immunology.

Dr. Shahrose Rahman, Resident in the Department of Surgery, has a recent publication based on his work in the Anand lab, "Combinatorial Inhibition of Complement Factor D and BCL2 for Early-Onset Colorectal Cancer" in Diseases of the Colon & Rectum.

The Agarwal lab published 2 papers in March:

• "The TLK-ASF1 histone chaperone pathway plays a critical role in IL-1b-mediated AML progression" in Blood.
  • This paper is from Dr. Hsin-Yun Lin who is a postdoc in the Agarwal lab, who was formerly a graduate student in the Agarwal lab as well.
• "Targeting CCL2/CCR2 signaling overcomes MEK inhibitor resistance in Acute Myeloid Leukemia" in Clinical Cancer Research.

View all CDCB news and recognitions.