Cancer, the brain, the sun: As scientists flock to Palm Beach, great lectures abound

One of the truly wonderful things about living here is the opportunity to hear some of the country’s top scientific minds speak about their research.

During the “season” they come by the dozens to meet with potential philanthropic donors. Few of us fit that profile, but most of the time, these scientists also offer events which are open to the public.

For a front-row view of the bleeding edge of science, these lectures can’t be beat.

In the past week, I’ve been at the Kravis Center to hear the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center’s “Making Cancer History” seminar, and at the Royal Poinciana Chapel in Palm Beach for the first lecture in Max Planck Florida’s lecture series.

Scripps Florida has launched a lecture series as well, “The Front Lines of Hope,” and I’m looking forward to attending the next one on March 15, when they will discuss long-term memory formation. Details are below.

This past Wednesday, Dr. David Fitzpatrick, Max Planck Florida’s scientific director and CEO, demonstrated the new scientific tools that he’s using to illuminate brain circuitry.

By taking jellyfish bioluminescence genes and inserting them into mouse neurons, he’s gaining unprecedented insights into how memory and learning affect the physiology and arrangement of neurons in the visual cortex. These insights that may prove important in the quest to better treat and prevent schizophrenia or autism, prevent Alzheimer’s or recover from stroke damage.

The advances are happening because of what Fitzpatrick called “curiosity-driven basic science,” something than can be a tougher fundraising sell than a race for a cure. But cures don’t happen without basic science.

“This is what the Max Planck Institute is all about,” Fitzpatrick said. “Insight must precede application. You cannot fix it until you understand how it works.”

At MD Anderson’s event, Dr. Laurence Cooper described how the group is using a registry of sick pets to conduct clinical trials – they are aimed at curing animals that are already sick, a different and possibly more productive approach than attempting to create disease in healthy animals. You can see more here.

Cooper’s group is constructing designer immune system T cells, cells which can be custom-made with exactly the right molecule needed to find and kill cancer cells. In dogs with the same disease that humans get, it’s beginning to show great promise, he said.

The new president of MD Anderson, Dr. Ronald DePinho, also spoke last Saturday, announcing an ambitious “moon-shot” goal of selecting five types of cancer for an all-out scientific war. He’s beginning to convene experts on illnesses like tough-to-treat triple-negative breast cancer, and prostate cancer – diseases where a concerted, organized, focused scientific attack with the newest tools of science is most likely to bear fruit quickly.

“I want to develop therapies that will not only cure the cancer, but will preserve the quality of life for the individuals who have been treated,” DePinho said.
DePinho recently left the Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center to head up MD Anderson.

His own research is showing insights into aging and cancer, and he says he’s continuing that research at MD Anderson. He studies telomeres, the tips of chromosomes that grow shorter with age and cell division. As they grow shorter, cells’ DNA replication machinery grows more unstable, he said. That instability may be what’s behind cancer and other diseases.

There’s evidence that if telomeres can be restored, the aging process can be reversed – it even restored infertility in the mice. That discovery, made while he was still at Dana-Farber, was intriguing enough to make the Colbert Report. ( See this hysterical clip. )

If you missed this week’s great talks, no worries. There are several more to come before season dissolves into summer.

So mark your calendar and don’t forget to RSVP in advance.

Wednesday, March 7
“How the Brain Stores Information.”
Dr. Tobias Bonhoeffer, director of the Max Planck Institute of Neurobiology in Munich, Germany
6:30 p.m. – 7:30 p.m.
Royal Poinciana Chapel Fellowship Hall, 60 Cocoanut Row in Palm Beach.
RSVP at 561-972-9007 or rsvp@maxplanckflorida.org.

Thursday, March 15, 2012
“Long-Term Memory Formation: How Scripps Research May Unlock the Complexities of Alzheimer’s”
Dr. Gavin Rumbaugh and Dr. Sathya Puthanveettil, Scripps Florida
5 – 7 p.m.
The Rodney B. Fink Education Pavilion
120 Scripps Way
RSVP at Philanthropy-Florida@scripps.edu or call 561 228.2084

Tuesday, March 27
“Exploring our fiery star, the Sun.”
Dr. Sami Solanki, director at the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Katlenburg-Lindau, Germany
“Dr. Solanki is leading the SUNRISE Mission of the German Space Agency, DLR, NASA and the Spanish Space Agency and is the principal investigator of the SO/PHI instrument on the European Space Agency’s Orbiter mission, which will study the Sun from a distance closer than any spacecraft previously and provide images and measurements in unprecedented resolution and detail.”
6:30 p.m. – 7:30 p.m.
Royal Poinciana Chapel Fellowship Hall, 60 Cocoanut Row in Palm Beach.
RSVP at 561-972-9007 or rsvp@maxplanckflorida.org.

Monday, April 16, 2012
“Clean Energy is Possible: How Scripps and NextEra Collaborate to Make it Practical and Plentiful”
Dr. Roy Periana, Scripps Florida
5 – 7 p.m.
The Rodney B. Fink Education Pavilion
120 Scripps Way
RSVP at Philanthropy-Florida@scripps.edu or call 561 228.2084