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Slimmed Down but Healthy Uncertain Times for Revival 7-~-----------------------------------------------NEVVS , --------------------------------NA_T_U_RE_·_v_o_L_~_J_~__ JU_N_E_I __~3 Institute for Cancer Research Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory Slimmed down but healthy Uncertain times WITH the opening last week of a new Dr Tim McElwain to its chair of medical £500,000 drug development laboratory at oncology at ICR, and the Medical for revival Sutton, in Surrey, the Institute for Cancer Research Council has increased its support Berkeley, California Research (ICR) has taken a magic step to­ for this area. ALTHOUGH the Lawrence Berkeley wards the radical restructuring initiated Weiss feels the new slimmed-down ICR, Laboratory's (LBL's) proposal to be the three years ago by its then-new director, Dr which now has a total staff of 410 com­ home for a new National Center for Ad­ Robin Weiss. pared with 470 three years ago, will main­ vanced Materials (NCAM) continues to As a result of an 18 per cent cut in fund­ tain its pre-eminent position in those areas take a beating, it remains the heart of the ing in 1977, Weiss inherited a £1 million where it is best known. New funding laboratory's hopes for holding its own in deficit which is being made good by a pro­ arrangements mean ICR now has to com­ staff and funds. For the latest of a series of gramme of staff reductions and •'retrench­ pete for research grants from a joint com­ studies of the national laboratories, soon ment". A research station at Pollards mittee of its main sources of support, the to be released by the White House Science Wood, in Buckinghamshire, will be closed Cancer Research Campaign and the Council, is expected once again to call on next year, leaving the institute's activities Medical Research Council. the laboratories to focus on a more defined concentrated at its Sutton site and at the Weiss says the new system has provided mission, more attuned to national needs-­ Chester Beatty Research Laboratories in stability which had been lacking. He points a criticism that NCAM is planned to meet. Chelsea, London. out that the Drug Development Section of The recent history of LBL leaves no The new laboratory, directed by Pro­ the institute has probably introduced more doubts why NCAM is so important for the fessor A.B. Foster, is named after the anticancer drugs than any other unit in the laboratory. While many of the other na­ Cancer Research Campaign, which made world. Two drugs in particular are causing tional laboratories were able to cushion the capital grants of £900,000 for the building excitement at present: one, known as blow of reduced base funding by having and for improvements to the laboratories CB3717, is an enzyme inhibitor which single, large projects that could not be at Chelsea. It will house ICR's Drug although only in phase I of clinical trials is abandoned, LBL's diversity left it vulner­ Development Section, which was formerly showing potential for use against cancers able. Over the past two years, LBL has lost split between Sutton and Chelsea, and of the breast and ovary and could in time 19 per cent of its staff. Ironically, the close enable closer collaboration with the Sutton become a less toxic alternative to metho­ association with the University of Califor­ branch of the Royal Marsden Hospital. trexate. The other, CBDCA, is a non-toxic nia's Berkeley campus that has made LBL ICR's Chemical Carcinogenesis Section, platinum derivative now in phase II of perhaps the most scientifically solid of the headed by Dr Peter Brookes, will move to clinical trials. The section is also continuing national laboratories (LBL director David Sutton from Pollards Wood next year and its pioneering work on antibody-toxin Shirley points with pride to the 30 National Dr Julian Peto of the Imperial Cancer conjugate therapy, using monoclonal an­ Academy of Sciences members on his staff) Research Fund's epidemiology unit in Ox­ tibodies to target the a subunit of chloram­ is also responsible for the diversity. ford will head the ICR epidemiology unit at bucil, a widely used anti tumour drug, onto NCAM, when fully operational, would Sutton from October. The animal breeding in vitro bone marrow cells. Tim Beardsley bring the staff and budget of LBL's basic centre at Pollards Wood will be run down, energy sciences division up to a full one­ and arrangements for the supply of experi­ third of the total laboratory. The mental animals have been made with the laboratory employs 4,000 people (2,500 Medical Research Council. full-time equivalents) with an operating Weiss's main innovation at ICR has been budget of $110 million. "If we get the sup­ to expand basic research in cell and mole­ port for NCAM." Shirley said in an inter­ cular biology, which was poorly repre­ view here last week, "we can at best hold sented before 1980 and is the subject of the line." The problem is that the plan for important recent developments. With NCAM has come under attack. First, newly-refurbished laboratories, the Cell materials scientists complained that the and Molecular Biology Section is studying proposal was spirited into the President's human oncogenes and tumour viruses. I 984 budget without sufficient peer review. Plans are well advanced to supplement More recently, the House of Represen­ those studies with a major new unit tatives voted to kill all appropriations for devoted to the study of human leukaemia the project. and wholly supported by the Leukaemia Shirley presses his case for NCAM not Research Fund. Dr Mel Greaves, head of only as a salvation for LBL, but also as a the membrane immunology laboratory at model of "serious" efforts to respond to the Imperial Cancer Research Fund, is ex­ the criticisms of the national laboratories' pected to direct the new unit. lack of focus and inattention to national The main casualties of Weiss's restruc­ needs. "There is a tendency to lose sight of turing have been tumour immunology, the necessary coupling between support of which will continue but on a reduced scale, research by the federal government and the and radiobiology. Fundamental research EuROPE'S £175 million attempt to create requirement that research address national in this area has been discontinued, and the conditions for the thermonuclear needs. NCAM is meant to address these many of the staff have moved with Pro­ fusion of deuterium and tritium, the Joint problems -- I was not aiming to get a piece fessor G.E. Adams to the Medical European Torus or JET, circulated its first of an existing pie, I was aiming to get a big­ Research Council's radiobiology unit at plasma (of normal hydrogen) on Saturday ger pie", he said. Harwell. The teaching role of the institute, 25July. JET, a tokomak, is pictured above He added that critics of NCAM who as part of the British Postgraduate Medical towards the end of Its five-year construc­ claim that it was not peer-reviewed "don't Federation, has been strengthened with the tion, which was completed on time and understand the process by which research is appointment of Professor G. Westbury to "within a few per cent" of costs envisaged supported". He asked a rhetorical ques­ the newly-established chair of surgery. The in 1975, the JET team says. 0 tion of those critics: "Where were you Cancer Research Campaign has appointed when we were laying off 19 per cent of our 002R-OR3618J/26074fl-tl2SOI.OO C 1983 Macmillan Journals ltd _NA_ru~~~vo_I_.. ~~J~~~J~UN~E~I~=J-----------------------------NEVV$---------------------------------------------- 7~ work force? -that, by the way, was not would be created, which, said Lee the result of peer review". And he made no Schroeder, one of the Tevalac's attempt to hide his distaste for "members developers, could be studied to learn the Koestler's last laugh of the scientific community going after "thermodynamics" of quarks. This ex­ ARTHUR Koestler and his wife Cynthia, money with all the grace of hogs going after amination of bulk effects of quarks would who committed suicide together last truffles" . complement the "microscopic", single March, must have relished the prospect The final congressional decision on quark view that a proposed electron ac­ that their bequest to establish the first chair NCAM is still up in the air. The House of celerator will offer (see Nature 2 June, in parapsychology at a British university Representatives, after manoeuvrin~ that p.368). would set a cat among the academic first took $5 million away from NCAM for The Tevalac's proponents are hoping for pigeons. By last week, when news of the a laboratory at Catholic University (see an endorsement by the Nuclear Science Ad­ £500,000 bequest became known, no Nature 26 May, p.272), voted to delete all visory Committee (NSAC) when it meets university had grasped the nettle, but dis­ funds for construction from the 1984 ap­ on July 11-16 to draw up a five-year plan cussions were in progress with several. propriations. The Senate has voted to ap­ for nuclear physics. NSAC makes Koestler's last years were marked by an propriate $3 million, and the most likely recommendations to the Department of increasing fascination with parapsycho­ outcome of the House-Senate conference Energy and the National Science Founda­ logy, leading to two books on the subject. - expected to take place this week - is tion on priorities in the field. The Tevalac He wrote in his suicide note of his "timid some compromise between the two figures. will be vying with a proposal from Los hopes of a depersonalized afterlife". Now Another large project for which LBL has Alamos National Laboratory to upgrade it is up to Dr John Beloff, senior lecturer in high hopes is the Tevalac, a proposed its LAMF accelerator (the Los Alamos psychology at the University of Edinburgh relativistic heavy-ion accelerator.
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