Cancer Researcher Is Awarded Grant

A cancer researcher who resides here was the recipient of a $313,000 national award to continue her study of how decreasing a certain protein might fight cancer.

Linda G. Baum, an associate professor of pathology at the UCLA School of Medicine, said the award will enable her lab to continue its research of the protein galectin-1 for three uninterrupted years.

“We’re ecstatic,” Baum said Wednesday. “This has been a hard project in a sense that we span a couple of areas, the biochemical and the immunological disciplines. . . . It was a relief to convince the scientific community that this was an area worth studying.”

The research deals with galectin-1, which is produced by the human thymus and lymph nodes. This protein normally induces the self-destruction of the immune system’s T cells after they have been used and are no longer needed by the body.

“Galectin-1 is kind of the loaded gun of the body,” Baum said.

But Baum believe that cancer tumors might be forcing the T cells to be rejected prematurely. “We’d like to keep the T cells around so they will recognize and process tumor cells,” she said.

Cecilia Olkowski, an American Cancer Society spokeswoman, said the society has awarded research grants to only 17% of all applicants reviewed.

Baum’s research, she said, might lead to a “more comprehensive understanding of immune system functions, which ultimately will help cancer clinicians develop new targeted anti-cancer therapies that are safer and more effective for cancer patients.”