Historic Hurd Hall on Johns Hopkins’ East Baltimore campus was filled to capacity on Jan. 13 with students, faculty and staff waiting to hear five scientists—all in the early part of their careers—describe their novel ideas on how to cure metastatic cancer.
The five were finalists, chosen from among 44 entrants, in a competition on creative thinking named for John Rangos Sr., chairman of the Rangos Family Foundation, who funded the awards. Each scientist had 10 minutes to present his or her idea and answer questions from a panel of faculty judges, who would select the winners based on the novelty and scientific merit of their ideas, as well as the feasibility of future clinical applications of their proposals (…)
First up to the podium was medical oncology fellow and eventual fifth-place winner Kevin Cheung, who proposes turning back the clock on cancer cells by reprogramming them into germ cells. He suggests that the reason testicular and other germ cell tumors have high cure rates is because of their undifferentiated state. Just as scientists have created immature pluripotent stem cells from adult cells, Cheung says that the same could be done with cancer cells. By age reversing resistant cancer cells, he proposes to make them sensitive to conventional chemotherapy (…)
The overall prize went to radiation oncology resident Sharabi for his idea titled “Specific Immune Response Against Testicular Cancer: A Proposed Mechanism for Long-Term Remission.”
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Using a patient’s own stem cells, researchers at Johns Hopkins have corrected the ![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_c.png?x-id=5bdde249-a9f6-4b88-a798-b43b58ffd18e)

