A donation has recently been made to the Center for Colon Cancer Research in the memory of Lt. Colonel Robert M. Reese, USA (Ret.). Lt. Colonel Reese graduated from West Point Military Academy in 1945 and was buried at the U.S. Military Academy Post Cemetery in NY. He passed away from colon cancer on November 13, 2004.

A donation has recently been made to the Center for Colon Cancer Research by Mr. Keith Funderburk of Lawrenceville, GA. Mr. Funderburk's gift, which was matched by the Russell Corporation of Alexander City, AL, is in honor of his father, Mr. Robert Funderburk, who is a colon cancer survior.

The CCCR External Advisory Committee (Drs. David Dyer, Amy Moser, and Carl Porter) visited USC on April 26-27. During this visit, the Committee met with COBRE Project PIs, Mentors, Core Facility Directors, and recently hired faculty to discuss progress and plans related to current research on colon cancer.

The Histology/Imaging Core Facility, which is under the direction of Dr. Robert Price, has purchased a Zeiss LSM 510 META confocal laser scanning microscope system. This instrument is one of the new generation confocal microscopes that allows the spectral separation of closely-related fluorescent signals, enabling use of many new fluorescent markers that are becoming available and that have ovberlapping absorption and emission spectra. The confocal system was purchased with funds from a COBRE supplemental equipment grant.

Dr. Michael Wyatt, a COBRE Project PI, learned that his R01 application to the NIH received a percentile ranking of 15.1, which makes it highly likely that his proposal will be funded. Dr. Wyatt has focused his studies on the role of DNA repair, primarily base-excision repair, in modulating cellular response to thymine deprivation. Since several chemotherapeutic agents used in the treatment of colorectal cancer induce thymine deprivation, Dr. Wyatt's work is directly relevant to the treatment of cancer. Drs. Alan Waldman and Sondra Berger, who are Dr. Wyatt's COBRE Mentors, are Co-Investigators on this project.