Guthrie tours cancer research center

Owensboro Messenger-Inquirer (KY) – Tuesday, January 26, 2010

(Owensboro) Second District U.S. Rep. Brett Guthrie has seen the devastating effects of brain injuries on American soldiers serving in places such as Iraq and Afghanistan, so he listened closely when research scientist Uma Sankar of the Owensboro Cancer Research Center began telling him about adult stem cell research.

Not long after Guthrie arrived at the Mary Mitchell Cancer Center he stepped into the tissue culture lab where Sankar works with rodents, trying to learn how to direct stem cells to regenerate nerve tissue.

Guthrie was impressed and said he hopes the research will someday help brain-injured military personnel.

“We have so many brain injuries and so many of them are surviving now,” Guthrie said.

Keith Davis, executive director of the research program, told Guthrie the quest is to figure out to take stem cells out and then put them back in to generate specific tissue in order to repair traumatic injuries.

Moments earlier Guthrie spent a few minutes talking to research scientist Nobuyuki Matoba, who does research with plant-based pharmaceuticals in hopes of producing vaccines and anti-viral proteins. He also met research scientist Kenneth Palmer, who does basic research in broad spectrum anti-virals made possible with close to $2.5 million in various grants, most of it provided by the National Institutes of Health.

Guthrie came to the cancer center to observe how a $2 million appropriation to the center from the U.S. Department of Defense was being used. The grant was announced in December. The grants for cancer and other types of medical research based on plant-based technology followed grants of $2 million for the center in 2007 and 2008.

The research program is a joint venture between OMHS and the University of Louisville’s James Graham Brown Cancer Center. The partners created the program to develop cancer therapies using plant-based production systems. Ten months ago, Palmer was the senior author of a study published in the National Academy of Sciences about how the HIV inhibitor can be produced cheaply in plants. Another partner is Kentucky BioProcessing, an OMHS venture established in 2006.

Guthrie, one of those who helped secure the Department of Defense grant, said the appropriation will help the local economy by creating jobs and also has the potential to help in the fight against bio-terrorism.

“I was talking to people today who might change the world,” Guthrie said