Let's not lose focus

We had lab meeting yesterday. We usually hold it in one of the conference rooms over here near our lab (we have two of them on our floor) but since our boss was in between surgeries, we went over to the departmental offices to have our meeting. Now, keep in mind that our lab is as far away from our department as possible without having to go outside. I actually counted the steps one day - it's 1008. That is over 0.5 miles. On days that we have to make several trips to the department, we semi-jokingly tell our boss that he needs to spring for a Segway (sp?). Anyway, I was the only native English speaker in the group and somehow we got on the subject of farms. I spent half of our trip to the department explaining the difference between a ranch and a farm as well as the types of animals on ranches and farms. It was somewhat comical. The two Chinese women giggled when I told them a male pig is called a boar. I am not sure what was so funny about that.

When my friends and I get together, we sometimes discuss the merits of having a PhD for a boss vs. an MD for a boss. I personally prefer an MD. Usually they are in the lab less than a PhD and the good ones know that they aren't science's gift to research. That is sometimes detrimental also. I certainly don't know everything and it is nice to have someone to turn to with questions. I have a very intelligent boss but he doesn't have the bench experience that a PhD would have. What he does have, however, is the ability to remind us what we are doing. So many researchers get so tied up in their one protein or their one gene that they fail to see the patient. Yesterday, during lab meeting, Marlan was presenting a journal article about menigiomas. Meninges are the membranes that line our brain and spinal cord. A menigioma is a cancer that can be quite aggressive although not metastatic. By aggressive I mean that a menigioma will eat its way through bone and tissue. As we were talking about Merlin (a tumor suppressor protein that is missing in menigiomas and schwannomas) Marlan pulled up some of MRIs of a couple of his patients that have menigiomas. One of them was clearly inoperable due to its placement and widespread location. This patient will die. It really helped me to re-focus my efforts and remind me what I am doing. I know that finding a "cure" for this type of cancer (or any type of cancer)will not be a Eureka moment but rather a series of discoveries that will eventually help us to tailor treatments to individuals. So, it is time to get back to teasing apart the molecular pathways these tumor cells use to survive and senesce.