Blog Posts

Despite dramatic progress in cancer therapy, long-term survival is hindered when cancer returns. Tumor cells that escape initial treatment can travel to distant sites in the body and remain hidden there silently for years. They don’t actively multiply until they receive the right stimuli that coax them out of their sleep. When these “dormant” cells reawaken, they divide and give rise to new tumors often very difficult to treat. 
 

Approaching the end of the year, Wistar takes stock of its federal funding performance.

During the 2020 fiscal year of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) — the U.S. government agency that supports biomedical research, it funded Wistar research by granting more than $43M in existing and newly awarded grants.

A conversation with Anne Schoemaker about her vision to sponsor The Wistar-Schoemaker International Postdoctoral Fellowship, a partnership launched in 2019 by Wistar and Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC) in the Netherlands to bring LUMC graduates to Wistar for for postdoctoral training. 

The sugar molecules on the surface of host cells impact HIV persistency during antiretroviral therapy; breast cancer cells send oncogenic messages to neighboring normal cells using tiny packages called extracellular vesicles.

Dr. Ian Tietjen came to Wistar in 2019 as a research assistant professor in the laboratory of Dr. Luis Montaner. He brings a fascinating approach to HIV and infectious disease research that explores the traditional medicine knowledge of Indigenous peoples and healers around the world in treating infection with natural substances.