I am following up on the "how to" post from a little while ago, which explained how to get the RSS feed from this blog into your favorite reader. It turns out, that many folks are not aware of the amazing benefits of RSS. Here is a little video to help explain it (don't take my word for it):

A big "Thanks" to Jennifer Texada, social media guru at MDACC, for alerting me to this vid!

I hear you saying - "OK, so I am going to all this trouble just to read YOUR blog. You must be kidding - that's not worth the effort..."

Wrong. There are literally thousands of useful RSS feeds out there, and it is increasingly dominating the way information is served. Most major journals put our their electronic table of contents out by RSS. So instead of these piling up in your email, and quickly getting lost, you can find them in your RSS reader - when you want to look them over. New items can be distinguished here, just like in your email.

But there is something even cooler about RSS - you can use it to easily set up search robots. A simple example is any News search on Google, which can be turned into an RSS feed. Once you have an RSS reader, you will discover many things that you can track.

I wanted to share the State of Texas Cancer Prevention and Research Institute (CPRIT) website with all of you for reference purposes. It includes information and news about CPRIT, the board, meeting agendas, meeting minutes, laws, rules and guidelines, Texas Cancer Plan, funded projects, publications, reports and statistics, useful links and funding opportunities.

The next CPRIT Oversight Committee meeting is scheduled for Wednesday, November 19, 2008. The State of Texas tentatively plans to begin awarding grant funds in Fall 2009.

Link to State of Texas CPRIT website:
http://www.cprit.state.tx.us/

A history of MDACC is schedule to appear by the end of the year. You can pre-order it now at Amazon. It will be available in our gift shops at a discount to employees.

From the description on the Amazon page: "The history of the M. D. Anderson Cancer Center vividly reveals how cancer treatment in America -- and our attitudes toward the disease -- has changed since the middle of the twentieth century.

One of the preeminent cancer centers in the world, M. D. Anderson is also one of the first medical institutions devoted exclusively to caring for people with cancer and researching treatments and cures for the disease. Historian James S. Olson's narrative relates the story of the center's founding and of the surgeons, radiologists, radiotherapists, nurses, medical oncologists, scientists, administrators, and patients who built M. D. Anderson into the world-class institution it is today.

Through interviews with M. D. Anderson's leaders and patients, Olson brings to life the struggle to understand and treat cancer in America. A cancer survivor who has himself been treated at the center, Olson imbues this history with humor, passion, and humanity."

Dr. Weinstein presented a useful tool to use at today's TCGA meeting, called Splice Center.

VisitGenomics and Bioinformatics Group and look under tools at left, or use this link to Splice Center.

You can see the splice variants from GenBank and RefSeq, and see Affy probes superimposed. Links to NCBI allow you to look at the genes.

Another tool, GoMiner, is an interpretation tool for 'omics' data. You can upload gene IDs and look at gene ontologies. According to the website: "Addresses the question, "Now that I've done the gene expression experiment and identified a set of 'interesting' genes, what do those genes mean biologically?" GoMiner batch-processes and organizes lists of thousands or tens of thousands of genes and provides two fluent, robust visualizations of the genes in the framework of the Gene Ontology hierarchy. (Zeeberg, et al., Genome Biology 2003; 4:R28)".

Contact Dr. Weinstein if you would like to be referred to someone who can help.

Systems Biology, the counterpoint to reductionist science, is a coming thing. With the ever increasing availability of high-throughput technology it is becoming accessible. With the realization that defects in single genes, or even pathways, can not explain complex diseases, it is becoming a necessity. And with the advent of this year's Annual Symposium on Cancer Research, it is coming to MD Anderson!

At the end of October, on R11, there will be a fantastic, 3-day meeting on Systems Biology - everyone in the BTC interested in the analysis of more than one gene at a time, is strongly encouraged to attend. You can see more information on the meeting here: www.mdanderson.org/ascr.

See you there!