Ellison funds ageing research

Research into the biology of ageing has received a financial boost through the philanthropic interests of Larry Ellison, CEO of the software giant, Oracle Corporation. Ellison's long standing interest in biomedical research resulted last year in the establishment of the Ellison Medical Foundation, a private non-profit organization and the second largest funding agency of basic biomedical research on ageing after the National Institute of Aging (NIA). Ellison is seeking to fund innovative biomedical ageing research that is currently funded inadequately, perhaps because of perceived risk of failure or because it is outside traditional research interests. Richard Sprott, Executive Director of the foundation (formerly Associate Director of Biology of Aging programs at NIA) explains that they are working closely with the NIA to ensure that their efforts complement, rather than compete. The current activities of the foundation include a New Scholars program, a Senior Scholars program and sponsorship of a series of conferences focusing on specific areas of ageing research. Ellison has given financial commitment for five years, after which time he will evaluate whether the research activities supported by the Foundation warrant his continued investment. Joshua Lederberg, Chairman of the Scientific Advisory Board, notes that Ellison's interests in biomedical research are broad and that, if successful, the foundation's activities may inspire Ellison to support other fields in the future.

CSHL workshop online

Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) kicked off its series of workshops on Emerging Technologies for Cancer Research with the "Conditional Genetics Technologies in the Mouse" workshop (August 31– September 2). Organized by Allan Bradley, Klaus Rajewsky and Janet Rossant, the meeting embraced the latest technology for creating conditional mouse mutants, including updates on Cre and Flp recombination, ligand-induced dimerization and hormone-modulated systems. In the wake of the National Institutes of Health and the Jackson Laboratory signing an agreement with DuPont to use Cre/loxP technology last month (see September's editorial), the workshop concluded with a presentation by Daniel Curran, a representative from DuPont, outlining the conditions under which researchers can access the patented technology. For those who couldn't attend the workshop, there is an opportunity to peruse the material online at http://www.leadingstrand.org. The website features a slideshow of 32 of the 34 lectures, with audio accompaniment, although the discussions that followed the talks are not available. Access to the online material is free for workshop attendees and available to academic non-attendees for US$25. This is the first time that the contents of a CSHL meeting are available online. According to David Stewart, director of meetings and courses at the Laboratory, who arranged the online workshop, "this is a one-off trial for the Laboratory to assess the level of interest in this scientific resource".

Eugenia Spanopoulou (1960-1998)

The scientific community was saddened last month by the untimely passing of Eugenia Spanopoulou, an Assistant Professor at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York and recently appointed Howards Hughes Medical Institute Investigator. Dr. Spanopoulou was among those who perished in the Swissair 111 crash on September 3, as were her husband, Andrew Hodtsev, and son, Platon. Her scientific achievements included the characterization of the Thy-1 gene and its role in thymic oncogenesis as a graduate student with Frank Grosveld at the University of London; as a postdoctoral associate with David Baltimore, at MIT and the Rockefeller University, and later as an independent investigator, she was instrumental in characterizing the roles of the RAG-1 and RAG-2 proteins in V(D)J recombination, the fundamental mechanism by which animals generate diversity in antigen receptors on B and T cells. More recently, she participated in demonstrating that Omenn syndrome, a severe immunodeficiency, results from defects in the V(D)J recombination process. "She really enjoyed the intellectual process, the whole puzzle, trying to move the pieces around and seeing where they would fit in," said colleague and collaborator Dr. David Schatz of Yale University. "She was just hitting her stride."