- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
(Note: The main UC Davis Department of Entomology news page is at https://entomology.ucdavis.edu.)
UC Davis Distinguished Professor Walter Leal: Third Academic Senate Award
The UC Davis Academic Senate today announced that UC Davis distinguished professor Walter Leal of the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology and former professor and chair of the Department of Entomology, is the recipient of the Faculty Distinguished Research Award.
And with that award, comes Academic Senate history.
Leal is the first UC Davis faculty member to be honored by the Academic Senate for all three of its awards celebrating outstanding teaching, public service and research. In 2020, the Academic Senate awarded him the Distinguished Teaching Award for Undergraduate Teaching, and in 2022 Distinguished Scholarly Public Service Award.
“Dr. Leal is an internationally recognized entomologist and a world leader in his field for his groundbreaking and transformative research in insect olfaction and chemical ecology,” said nominator UC Davis distinguished professor Bruce Hammock of the Department of Entomology and Nematology, who won the Academic Senate's Faculty Research Award in 2001 and its Distinguished Teaching (Graduate Students/Professional) Award in 2008.
Leal said he's honored and humbled to receive the award, but emphasized that “it's a team effort.” See more.
Professor Louie Yang Receives Academic Senate's Distinguished Teaching Award
“I have watched him engage, inspire, and challenge his students, fostering creative and critical thinking like no one else I've ever seen,” Joanna Chiu, professor and chair of the department, wrote in her nomination letter. “We deeply appreciate and admire his innovative and inclusive teaching, his exemplary work ethic, his welcoming demeanor, his dedication to his students, and his nationally recognized ecology expertise. Louie has received many well-deserved teaching and mentoring awards for his teaching contributions on and off campus.” See more.
Professor Joanna Chiu: PBESA's Student Mentoring Award
Professor Chiu will receive the award at the PBESA meeting, set April 14-17 in the city of Waikoloa Beach, Hawaii. PBESA encompasses 11 Western states, plus parts of Canada and Mexico, and U.S. territories.
Nematologist Steve Nadler, professor and former chair of the department, nominated her for the mentoring award. He praised her as “an incredible mentor, inspirational, dedicated and passionate about helping her students succeed, as exemplified by her receiving the 2022 UC Davis Academic Senate Distinguished Teaching and Mentoring Award for her contributions to graduate student and professional mentoring, and the 2023 Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Mentoring Undergraduate Research. See more.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Eight of the 10 seminars are both in-person and virtual, while two will be virtual only. The in-person seminars will take place from 4:10 to 5 p.m. (Pacific Time) on Wednesdays in Room 122 of Briggs Hall, located off Kleiber Drive. All seminars will live-streamed on Zoom and recorded for future viewing. The Zoom link: https://ucdavis.zoom.us/j/95882849672.
The topics range from bark beetles and meat-eating bees to exit seminars by two UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology doctoral candidates.
Wednesday, Jan. 11--Virtual Only
Clément Vinauger, Ph.D.
Assistant professor
Virginia Tech Department of Biochemistry
Title: "Neural and Molecular Basis of Mosquito Behavior"
Host: Joanna Chiu, professor and vice chair, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology
Wednesday, Jan. 18
Quinn McFredrick, Ph.D.
Assistant professor
UC Riverside Department of Entomology
Title: "The Weird World of Pathogens, Microbes, and Meat-Eating Bees"
Wednesday, Jan. 25
Lisa Chamberland, Ph.D.
Post-doctoral fellow, Jason Bond Lab
UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology
Title: Pending
Host: Jason Bond, the Evert and Marion Schlinger Endowed Chair, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology and associate dean, UC Davis College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences.
Wednesday, Feb. 1
Chris Fettig, Ph.D.
Research entomologist
U. S. Forest Service
Title: "Bark Beetles: How Tiny Insects Are Transforming Western Forests with a Little Help from Climate Change'
Wednesday, Feb. 8
Lauren Ponisio, Ph.D.
Assistant professor
University of Oregon Department of Biology
Title: "Disease in Plant-Pollinator Communities"
Host: Rachel Vannette, associate professor, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology
Wednesday, Feb. 15
Christine Tabuloc, doctoral candidate
Molecular geneticist, Joanna Chiu lab
UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology
Title: (Title pending; this is her exit seminar)
Host: Joanna Chiu, professor and vice chair, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology
Wednesday, Feb. 22
Kyle Lewald, doctoral candidate
Molecular geneticist, Joanna Chiu lab
UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology
Title: "Using Genomic Data to Understand and Prevent the Spread of Tuta absoluta" (exit seminar)
Host: Joanna Chiu, professor and vice chair, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology
Wednesday, March 1
Dana Nayduch, Ph.D.
Research entomologist
USDA-ARS Center for Grain and Animal Health Research
Title: "Can Surveying Microbial Communities of House Flies Help Us Understand Emerging Threats to Animal and Human Health?"
Wednesday, March 8
Amy Worthington, Ph.D.
Assistant professor
Creighton University Department of Biology
Title: "A Host of Hardships: The Costs of Harboring a Long-Lived Parasite"
Host: Joanna Chiu, professor and vice chair, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology
Wednesday, March 15 -- Virtual Only
Sylvain Pincebourde, Ph.D.
Researcher
University of Tours, Insect Biology Research Institute
Title: "The Key Role of Microclimates in Modulating the Response of Ectotherms to Climate Change"
Host: Emily Meineke, assistant professor, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology
The Department of Entomology and Nematology, ranked among the top entomology departments in the United States, is chaired by nematologist and professor Steve Nadler. Vice chair is molecular geneticist and physiologist Joanna Chiu.
For further information on the seminars or technical difficulties with Zoom, contact Meineke at ekmeineke@ucdavis.edu.
(Editor's Note: Forest entomologist Malcolm Furniss of Moscow, Idaho, researched the life of noted scientific illustrator Mary Foley Benson, 1905-1992. In her later years, she served as an illustrator for the UC Davis Department of Entomology.)
By Malcolm M. Furniss
Moscow, Idaho
MalFurniss@turbonet.com
My introduction to the work of scientific illustrator Mary Foley Benson (1905–1992) was happenstance. I am a forest entomologist, engaged for many years in research on bark beetles and associated organisms, including parasitoid Hymenoptera. Since 1963, I have resided in Moscow, Idaho, and have had ties with the former Bureau of Entomology laboratory at Coeur d'Alene, 90 miles to the north. There, Donald De Leon had studied Coeloides dendroctoni Cushman, a braconid preying on larvae of a scolytine, Dendroctonus ponderosae Hopkins, in western white pine. While reading his publication on the braconid's biology, I admired the drawing of a female wasp credited to Mary Foley (Fig. 1). A colleague noted my curiosity about this artist and called my attention to a photo of her in 1926 at age 21 (Fig. 2), when she was employed as a scientific illustrator with USDA. Subsequent inquiry led to discovering Mary's connections to entomology, including close acquaintance of the renowned Smithsonian Diptera taxonomist, John Merton Aldrich (1866–1934) (Fig. 3). I share here an account of Mary's life, concluding with her finding fulfillment and support in the community of Davis, Calif.
Mary Carilla Foley was born on April 2, 1905 at Storm Lake, Buena Vista County, Iowa, to Guy William Foley and Cora Helen Walrod. She had a brother, Charles, who had a flying service at Roosevelt Field, Long Island, and who had a pivotal role in her early adult life. Mary's inherent artistic talent became apparent while in first grade when her drawing of a puppy drew praise from her teacher (Wellings 1992). From then on, Mary made art her life and never forgot that teacher's encouragement.
At age 17, she left her Midwest roots to live with close family friends, John Aldrich and his wife, Della, in Washington, DC. Her intent was to go to art school—until then, she had been largely self-taught—but first, she had to earn tuition money. “Uncle Merton,” as she fondly referred to Aldrich, got her a job as an entomological draftsman with the USDA Bureau of Entomology. She learned quickly and eventually became Chief Scientific Illustrator. In evenings, she took art classes, graduating from the National School of Fine and Applied Arts and later attended the Corcoran School of Art. The closeness of Mary and Aldrich was like father and daughter. The tragic loss of his young son (Furniss 2010) may have affected his feelings for Mary, who would not have been much older.
Road Trip West with John and Della Aldrich, 1927
Mary and the Aldriches departed Washington on May 29, 1927 (nine days after Lindberg's Atlantic flight) in their Chevrolet (Fig. 4) coach loaded down with camping gear and headed across the continent on an adventure of their own. Aldrich kept a meticulous, detailed diary. A typed copy was discovered at the University of Idaho, Department of Entomology after his death and published by Paul Arnaud Jr. (Aldrich 2001). References to Mary appear throughout the diary and provide rare personal recollections of her. Her relatives and her closest friend, Margaret Hoyt, had passed away prior to my interest in her biography.
Driving was shared; however, it became apparent that Mary liked to drive and John often complimented her skill, so she drove the most. Two days into the trip, Aldrich noted: “Mary made fast time, keeping around 45.” Mary had little opportunity to paint until they reached the Rocky Mountains and a place named Wagon Tongue where Aldrich began collecting flies. Here she made water color paintings of a flower (Doedecatheon) and others not identified. Later, near Wells, Nevada, John packed up two Schmitt boxes pinned so far on the trip and mailed them with several small boxes of unmounted flies to Washington: “… some thousands of Diptera to be worked over later at home. Some good things there, I know.”
Eventually, they reached California and entered Yosemite National Park via Tioga Pass on July 4, having to drive over a patch of remnant snow. Nearing Bridal Veil, they came to a bear beside the road being fed by others. Mary stepped forward to get in a photo, but the bear was in the shade. Aldrich asked her to move the bear into the sun. As she came close to him, he gave her a bite above the knee; however, it only roughened the skin. Afterward, they made light of the episode.
Mary departed at Portland by train to return to her job. As John and Della drove up the scenic Columbia River highway heading for Moscow, they reminisced about her and missed having her company; they wished that she could be there at every turn. After thousands of miles cramped together, she had, indeed, become family!
John Aldrich had met and married Della Smith in Moscow after the untimely death of his first wife, Ellen Roe, and infant son, Spencer. The Aldriches were in Moscow from July 19 to Aug. 4, 1927, visiting Della's relatives and some of his acquaintances from his time at the University of Idaho, 1893–1913. On Sept. 2, the travelers reached home after being gone since 29 May. Aldrich died seven years later while completing plans to start early in June on another of his biennial collecting trips to the Pacific Coast. He was buried beside Ellen and son Spencer in the cemetery at Moscow.
Aviatrix Years
Mary's job at the Bureau of Entomology included painting insect-damaged crop plants such as appeared in the 1952 Yearbook of Agriculture (USDA 1952). Perhaps to break the boredom, she painted a parade of striped cucumber beetles across the office wall. Her boss was not amused (Wellings 1992). That phase of her life changed with marriage to Russell Benson, a patent lawyer and engineer with the US Patent Office, in 1928 and birth of a son, John, in 1931. In a Washington Post interview (Lewis 1937), she seemed to be living a normal life of a woman of the time “… keeping a home for her husband and small son, doing most of the cooking and making most of her own clothes.” They had designed their house in Georgian Colonial style with a studio for her painting. During the previous summer, she had laid a flagstone terrace while Russell built an outdoor fireplace. However, their relationship was less tranquil than it was portrayed.
Four years after her marriage, Mary had been given her first airplane ride by her brother, Charles, who had charge of one of the hangars at Roosevelt Field, Long Island (from where Lindberg had taken off on his Atlantic flight in 1927). That experience led to her taking flying lessons at the College Park, MD airport two or three times per week until receiving her pilot's license. Interviewed in later years, she divulged that she had kept her flying lessons secret from Russell (Wellings 1992). The marriage had become stressful and she found flying to be a great outlet from her exacting art work and her difficulties at home: “When I was flying, I left all my trouble on the ground. There was nobody up there but God and me.”
When Mary soloed in 1937, Charles gave her a J-2 Cub (Fig. 5). Her spirited nature showed in her flying: “I used to have such fun with it. Before I would land, I would wind it up with three giant loops in a row before they told me not to [not designed for aerobatics] (Haag 1983).” Owning an airplane expanded her involvement with flying. She became active in aviation organizations, including membership in The Ninety-Nines, an international organization for licensed women pilots founded by Amelia Earhart. She also joined the Washington Air Derby Association and placed second in her first air race, at College Park in May 1939 (Lewis 1937).
As World War II loomed, Mary's marriage was ending. Her son was in boarding school, so she joined Charles at his aviation business at Roosevelt Field, studied radio and navigation, became a member of the Civil Air Patrol and began ferrying airplanes for the War Training Service (Wellings 1992). She did not speak of her ferrying experiences except for saying that townsfolk came to see the woman flier after she was forced to land in a farm pasture and was waiting for a new propeller. She enlisted in the Women's Army Corps on Sept. 9, 1943 and instructed navigation to bomber crews in an on-ground Link Celestial Navigation Trainer. She regretted that women pilots were not allowed then to teach in the air.
When war ended, Mary relocated to Los Angeles where she attended Otis College of Art and Design from 1948–1951. Her training included instruction from Norman Rockwell, who spent the winter months there as artist-in-residence: “He was a wonderful person, with a fine sense of humor, and a scientific illustrator as well as a historian” (Tracy 1977). Afterward, she was a free-lance illustrator at Benson Studios. However, she did not attract the attention of newspaper reporters the way she had at Washington.
Home at Last … Davis
A great change came in 1964, when she was hired by Howard McKenzie at the University of California, Davis, as an illustrator for his monumental book on mealybugs (McKenzie 1967). She must have impressed him with her renditions of clearwing moths in Bulletin 190 of the U.S. National Museum (Engelhardt 1946) (Fig. 6). That publication contains 167 of her watercolor paintings of adult male and female clearwing moths and 87 line drawings of their genitalia. The paintings are eye-catching. When my nephew, Sean Furniss, saw them among the Engelhardt holdings at the Smithsonian, he was impressed with how real they appeared. I marvel that anyone could capture such natural colors by mixing pigment and rendering such life-like images with a brush.
Mary painted and drew mealybug illustrations for Howard McKenzie until his death in 1968. His 526-page treatise of California species has interspersed among its pages 21 of her watercolor paintings of species in their plant habitats (Fig. 7). The book also includes many of her line drawings of microscope slides of holotype adult females, split longitudinally by dorsal and ventral views (Fig. 8). The drawings include minute detail only seen by microscope at high magnification. Mary had become skilled in microscopy and, although not formally trained in entomology, she had to have learned much technical detail about what she was asked to draw. After McKenzie died, Douglass Miller completed two joint manuscripts containing illustrations by Mary (Miller and McKenzie 1971, 1973). Earlier, she had illustrated mealybugs in the monograph on the genus Asterolecanium by Russell (1941).
Announcement of publication of McKenzie's book noted that it had been illustrated by Mary and included her pedigree dating to her employment with USDA Bureau of Entomology in Washington DC during 1922-1928 as Chief Scientific Illustrator. Her presence in the community had already become known by her participation in Chamber of Commerce events, teaching painting techniques through the Davis adult education program and scientific illustration through the University of California Cooperative Extension.
In the years after McKenzie's death, she contracted a painting project for Harry Lange to illustrate a book on insects infesting California crops. The idea was to show both the insect and its host plant in realistic fashion. However, when Mary portrayed the plant, the accompanying insect was at the same scale, much too little to suit entomologist Lange. His wife, Ellen Lange, recalls that, “A real problem with depicting insects and plants is the difference in size. Harry Lange used to have battles with Mary about the plants being too big, i.e., emphasis on the plants versus the insects.” They resolved the problem by superimposing a “magnifying glass” to enlarge the insect (Fig. 9). The proposed publication never materialized; her 55 paintings are stored in the Bohart Museum of Entomology at Davis. In looking back, such paintings (and to some extent, drawings) were being replaced by digital photography and scanning electron microscopy.
Having retired from the Department of Entomology work, Mary (Fig. 10) said: “For the first time in my life, I can paint what I feel like painting most. I have always wanted to paint wildflowers, especially California wildflowers.” (Barr, 1992). She set about doing just that and put her paintings on display for sale at public places, gradually developing a devoted following. “This is the greatest place in the world for me. I get such support from the people of Davis. They hang my work all over town.” (Haag 1983).
An event in 1983 crowned her rise to prominence beyond the Davis community. At the Smithsonian's invitation, 45 of her paintings were displayed there during May-June, entitled, “Paintings of California Flora.” In her letter of Nov. 20, 1982 to Officer of Exhibits, William Haase, she listed the paintings, some of which included insects, that were to be sent and suggested the name California Flora for the exhibit. She singled out two of the paintings that merited special attention: “The Golden Lupine (Fig. 11) which grows around Davis, along the railroad track. It is almost extinct in the wild. There is some talk of making it the Davis city flower.” (She subsequently donated the original watercolor painting to the city.) And, “The second painting is the California poppy and wild oats. I had hoped to give it to our First Lady, Nancy Reagan, but could not decide just how to go about it. It seemed appropriate since the poppy is our state flower.” The letter concluded with a question regarding who should print the brochure for the show and that the paintings would be shipped by truck. She requested that, after the show, they should be sent to her residence at 1408 Claremont Drive, Davis. No one whom I contacted knew of the fate of these paintings. However, she evidently had prints made of some for sale. I noted one of her paintings being resold by Valley Auction on the Internet; it was number 123 of 500, entitled, “Indian Paint Brush and Fiddleback,” gathered from a vacant lot near her home. It portrays her eloquent, simplistic style that is so appealing to me.
Her dream of a Smithsonian exhibit having come true was timely. Her eyesight began failing soon after. She kept on painting but results were more abstract. During those challenging final years, she kept a positive outlook. As recalled in her obituary (Barr 1982) she said, “Life is like a stream; if you reach a stone you go around it. So now, I'm moving on after the stone.” Mary died at Davis on 18 June 1992 at age 87.
Acknowledgments
Sandra Kegley, Coeur d'Alene, ID, provided Fig. 2, which identified Mary and thereby initiated my interest in pursuing this article. Sean and Martha Furniss, Reston, VA, provided newspaper articles and searched the Smithsonian archives for information about Mary. Ellen Lange, Davis, CA, provided personal recollections of Mary and of her paintings for Harry Lange. Lynn Kimsey, Bohart Museum of Entomology, University of California, Davis, provided obituaries of Mary and a listing of Mary's paintings stored there. Amy Thompson, Special Collections and Archives Library, University of Idaho, provided the photo of Aldrich. Luc Leblanc, W.F. Barr Entomological Museum, University of Idaho, loaned references concerning Aldrich and Mary from the museum library. The manuscript was reviewed by Sandra Kegley, Ellen Lange, Linwood Laughy, and Douglass R. Miller, Systematic Entomology Laboratory, USDA, Beltsville, MD.
Literature Cited
Aldrich, J. M. 2001. Diary of a Western Trip, 1927. Myia - A publication on entomology 6:235-301. California Academy of Sciences.
Barr, P. 1992. Prominent Davis Artist Dies. Davis Enterprise. June 22.
De Leon, D. 1934. The Morphology of Coeloides dendroctoni Cushman (Hymenoptera: Braconidae). Journal New York Entomological Society. XLII: 297-317.
Engelhardt, G. P. 1946. The North American Clear-Wing Moths of the Family Aegeriidae. Bulletin 90. U. S. National Museum. 222 pp.
Furniss, M. M. 2010. John Merton Aldrich (1866-1934) – A Forest Entomologist's View of Idaho's Renowned Fly Taxonomist. Latah Legacy 38:18-23.
Haag, J. 1983. A Californian's Floral Fantasy. The Sacramento Bee. July 24.
Lewis, R. 1937. Vocation and Avocation Combined by D. C. Artist. The Washington Post. October 17.
McKenzie, H. L. 1967. Mealybugs of California with Taxonomy, Biology and Control of North American Species (Homoptera: Coccoidea: Pseudococcidae). University of California Press, Berkeley. 525 pp.
Miller D. R., and H. L. McKenzie. 1971. Sixth Taxonomic Study of North American Mealybugs with Additional Species from South America. Hilgardia. 40:565-602.
Miller, D. R., and H. L. McKenzie, 1973. Seventh Taxonomic Study of North American Mealybugs (Homoptera: Coccoidea: Pseudococcidae). Hilgardia 41: 489-542.
Russell, L. M. 1941. A Classification of the Scale Insect Genus Asterolecanium. U.S. Department of Agriculture, Miscellaneous Publications 424: 1-319
Tracy R. L. 1977. Mary Foley Benson. Her Wildflower Paintings Are “Expression of Gratitude” The Sacramento Bee. August 20, 1977.
USDA 1952. The Yearbook of Agriculture. U.S. Government Printing Office.
Wellings, M. 1992. Davis Has Lost a Free Spirit. The Davis Enterprise. June 23.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
It's the work of Washington State University's Honey Bee Research Program, College of Agricultural, Human and Natural Resource Sciences (WSU CAHNRS), and accessible free online on Vimeo at https://vimeo.com/380776410.
The 28-minute video, two years in the making, is aimed at helping beekeepers improve their stock and overcome some of the obstacles they may face in their breeding efforts.
The UC Davis connection is strong. The video chronicles the work of "the father of honey bee genetics," Harry H. Laidlaw Jr., of the University of California, Davis, for whom the Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. Honey Bee Research Facility on Bee Biology Road, UC Davis, is named. The husband-wife scientific team, Susan Cobey and Timothy Lawrence, both formerly of UC Davis and now of WSU, are executive producers and are featured in the video, as is noted bee scientist Steve Sheppard, director of the WSU Center for Reproductive Biology and former chair of the WSU Department of Entomology. The trio, also the authors, describe the Page-Laidlaw Population Breeding Program, one of the most successful bee breeding program and named for Laidlaw and Robert E. Page Jr., now a distinguished emeritus professor at UC Davis and emeritus provost, Arizona State University.
The video is "a guideline, that bees respond to selection but they need to be aware of some of the pitfalls that can hamper progress," said Lawrence, county director of WSU Extension for Island County. He's been working with bees since 1963 and landed his first commercial beekeeping job in 1969.
Sheppard says in the introductory remarks: "Honey bees are fascinating animals to work with and essential to pollination of our food supply. Currently faced with many challenges, one of our most important tools for long-term sustainability and improved honey bee health is a program of selection for stock that is hearty, productive, winters well, and has a reduced susceptibility to pests and pathogens."
Sheppard, Cobey and Lawrence know their bees. Between them, their bee experience encompasses some 150 years. Cobey, a bee breeder-geneticist who began working with bees in 1976, studied with Laidlaw, and later managed the Laidlaw facility. She is recognized as a global expert on instrumental insemination. Sheppard, who specializes in genetics and evolution of honey bees, and insect introductions and mechanisms of genetic differentiation, began working with bees while a graduate student at the University of Georgia.
In the video, Sheppard points out that "beekeepers recognize the need for more rigorous programs to select, improve and maintain their breeding stocks. The varroa mite and the movement of Africanized honey bees adds to this urgency. The principles discussed here serve as a guide to develop and establish a successful and practical breeding program with a focus on the traits you choose to enhance is your breeding population."
- Maintain a diverse population to provide the basis for selection
- A proficiency in queen and drone rearing
- Establish a selection index of desired traits
- Careful record-keeping
- Control of pests and diseases, and
- A method of controlled mating.
"The honey bee colony is a superorganism and this complicates the selection process," says Cobey, who breeds Carniolan bees. "Keeping your breeding program simple is key. Genetic diversity within the colony as well as within the population increases honey bee fitness. Several mechanisms contribute to this diversity:
- The high mating frequency of the queen.
- Semen storage--after mating only about 10 percent of the semen collected migrates to the spermatheca, although this represents each drone she has mated with."
- The high rate of recombination. a queen can mate with up to 60 drones, though typically mates with 15 to 20 drones. This mating behavior seems risky and inefficient, though is very successful in creating a genetically diverse superorganism, the colony."
"The many subfamilies of worker bees represented by the different drones mated, subfamilies specialize in different traits," Cobey says, "which together contribute to colony fitness."
She relates that "beekeepers and bee researchers have been selecting the honey bee for many years--some of the earliest attempts included attempting to mate bees in a confined enclosure or by hand .discoveries in the queens anatomy and physiology led to the first break through in controlled mating of honey bees with instrumental insemination.we owe a lot to some of the early pioneers in bee breeding like Laidlaw, (Lloyd) Watson, (Otto) Mackensen, (William) Roberts and many others."
Page-Laidlaw Closed Population Breeding Program
Noting that the Page-Laidlaw Closed Population Breeding Program "is one of the most successful practical breeding systems used, Cobey explains "the system basically is how most beekeepers approach selection--choose the best and propagate from these. The key component is an annual selection program supported with controlled mating and record keeping. Beekeepers rely on natural selection pressure to increase desirable traits in the population. The goal of the closed population breeding program is to increase the selection pressure and the frequency of desirable traits in the breeding population. Given the behavioral complexity of honey bees, this can be a challenging process. To be successful and give the program, longevity, it must be simple and repeatable."
The video drew nearly 1,000 views the first week. The first comment: "Great video! ....where can i buy that bee hat that Susan is wearing? Thanks so much!"
Cobey does have some nice hats!
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Now, newly published research on ovarian cancer, involving an anti-inflammatory compound discovered and developed in the Bruce Hammock lab at the University of California, Davis, and tested at Harvard Medical School on mice models, indicates that the compound not only suppresses inflammation but reduces cancer growth, acting as a “surge protector.”
“We are excited about this research and its potential,” said Hammock, a UC Davis distinguished professor who holds a joint appointment with the Department of Entomology and Nematology and the UC Davis Comprehensive Cancer Center. “Chemotherapy and surgery, the mainstays of conventional cancer treatment, can act as double-edged swords. It is tragic that the very treatments used to cure cancer are helping it to survive and grow.”
The research is a “novel approach to suppressing therapy-induced tumor growth and recurrence,” said the 13-member team from Harvard Medical School/Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC), UC Davis, Institute of Systems Biology of Seattle, and Emory University School of Medicine of Atlanta.
Their paper, “Suppression of Chemotherapy-induced Cytokine/Lipid Mediator Surge and Ovarian Cancer by a Dual Cox-2, sEH Inhibitor,” appears today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
“To prevent tumor-recurrence after therapy, it will be critical to neutralize the inherent tumor-promoting activity of therapy-generated debris,” said lead author Allison Gartung of Harvard Medical School/BIDMC. “Our results indicate that a dual COX-2/sEH inhibitor may offer a novel alternative to protect the body from a debris-mediated inflammatory response.”
Gartung said that the study confirmed that chemotherapy-killed ovarian cancer cells “induce surrounding immune cells called macrophages to release a surge of cytokines and lipid mediators that create an optimal environment for tumors to survive and grow.”
The team treated the mice models with a dual lipid pathway inhibitor discovered several years ago in the Hammock lab. It integrates two anti-inflammatory drugs (COX-2 inhibitor and soluble expoxide hydrolase (sEH) inhibitor) into a single molecule with the aim of reducing tumor angiogenesis and metastasis.
Chemist Sung Hee Hwang of the Hammock lab developed the compound, known as PTUPB, for the study. “The dual inhibitor here follows earlier work we did with it, blocking breast and lung tumors in mice,” Hammock said. “PTUPB is already being clinically evaluated for its therapeutic properties in other diseases.” Chemist Jun Yang of the Hammock lab did the mass spectrometry, showing how stabilization of lipid mediators reduces cancer growth and metastasis.
Lead researcher Dipak Panigrahy, a former Harvard physician turned full-time researcher, described chemotherapy and surgery “as our best tools for front-line cancer therapy, but chemotherapy and surgery create cell debris that can stimulate inflammation, angiogenesis, and metastasis. Thus, the very treatment used by oncologists to try to cure cancer is also helping it survive and grow. Overcoming the dilemma of debris-induced tumor progression is critical if we are to prevent tumor recurrence of treatment-resistance tumors which lead to cancer therapy failure.”
The tumor cell debris generates a “cytokine surge” that can result in a perfect storm for cancer progression. “The dual inhibitor acts as a surge protector,” Panigrahy said.
Panigrahy, who led angiogenesis and cancer animal modeling in the laboratory of Judah Folkman, a leading cancer research laboratory, based the debris model on his mother's chemotherapy treatments, and dedicated the research to his mother and “all other women who lost their lives to ovarian cancer.” American Cancer Society statistics show that among women, ovarian cancer ranks fifth in cancer deaths. A woman's risk of ovarian cancer is about 1 in 78; every year more than 14,000 die from the disease.
“Traditional cancer therapy sets up a dilemma,” Panigrahy commented. “Yes, we need to kill cancer cells but the inevitable byproduct of successfully doing so also stimulates tumor regrowth and progression. The more tumor cells you kill, the more inflammation you create, which can inadvertently stimulate the growth of surviving tumor cells. Overcoming the dilemma of debris-induced tumor progression is paramount if we are to prevent tumor recurrence of treatment-resistant tumors – the major reason for failure of cancer therapy. Our studies potentially pave the path for a new strategy for the prevention and treatment of chemotherapy-induced resistance with potential to translate to the clinic. If successful, this approach may also allow us to reduce the toxic activity of current treatment regimens.”
“The collaborative work in this paper not only defines a common problem with current cancer therapy, but it actually offers a potential solution to reduce metastasis and tumor growth following therapy,” said Primo Lara Jr., director of the UC Davis Comprehensive Cancer Center and associate director of Translational Research. “I am pleased that our Center was involved in this exciting project and we hope we can be involved in translating this basic research to the clinic.”
Panigrahy said that non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), which include aspirin and ibuprofen, reduce pain, fever and inflammation “bit may have severe side effects including stomach and brain bleeding as well as severe cardiovascular and kidney toxicity. They also do not specifically enhance clearing of debris.”
“We are exploring all options to translate PTUPB to cancer patients especially in combination with current cancer therapies such as chemotherapy, radiation, immunotherapy, or surgery which either directly or indirectly may generate tumor cell debris,” Panigrahy said. “Our next step is to investigate whether our findings are consistent with clinical studies involving human cancer.”
The Hammock lab has been researching the sEH inhibitor for 50 years. As a graduate student at UC Berkeley, Hammock co-discovered the sEH inhibitor with fellow graduate student Sarjeet Gill, now a distinguished professor at UC Riverside.
"We have a series of papers largely in PNAS, with the Panigrahy group showing first our soluble epoxide hydrolase inhibitors block tumor growth and metastasis when used with omega3 fish oils or with COX inhibitors and the role for these compounds in regulating a number of mediators of cancer growth," Hammock said.
Multiple grants funded the research. Hammock, the 31-year director of the UC Davis Superfund Program, received funds the National Cancer Institute and the National Institute on Environmental Health Sciences. The Panigrahy laboratory is funded by the Credit Union Kids at Heart Team. Other grants came from the C. J. Buckley Pediatric Brain Tumor Fund, Molly's Magic Wand for Pediatric Brain Tumors, the Markoff Foundation Art-in-Giving Foundation, the Kamen Foundation, Jared Branfman Sunflowers for Life, and the Joe Andruzzi Foundation. An NIH T32-training grant funded Gartung's work.
The Team
Allison Gartung completed her doctorate at Wayne State University in 2016 and has since served as a postdoctoral research fellow at Harvard Medical School/BIDMC. Highly honored for her work, she won the highest award for a post-doctoral fellow (Santosh Nigam Award) at the 15th International Conference on Bioactive Lipids in Cancer, Inflammation and Related Diseases, held in 2017 in Puerta Vallarta, Mexico. She served as a guest editor of a special double-issue of 24 invited world-experts in Cancer and Metastasis Reviews on Bioactive Lipids.
Dipak Panigrahy was accepted into medical school at Boston University at age 17. He trained in surgery with Dr. Roger Jenkins, who performed the first liver transplant in New England. Over the past decade, Panigrahy led angiogenesis and cancer animal modeling in the Judah Folkman laboratory. He joined the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in 2013, and in 2014 was appointed assistant professor of pathology, and currently has a laboratory in the Center for Vascular Biology Research. Panigrahy is the expert on the team for preclinical tumor models and examining novel concepts for cancer therapy at the preclinical stage –the diversity of models he has created and worked with is unmatched.
Bruce Hammock, UC Davis distinguished professor, is the world expert and discoverer of the dual COX2-sEH inhibitor. He received his doctorate in entomology/toxicology from UC Berkeley and joined the UC Davis faculty in 1980. Highly honored by his peers, Hammock is a fellow of the National Academy of Inventors, which honors academic invention and encourages translations of inventions to benefit society. He is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, and the recipient of scores of awards, including the Bernard B. Brodie Award in Drug Metabolism, sponsored by the America Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics; and the first McGiff Memorial Awardee in Lipid Biochemistry,
Mark Kieran of Bristol-Myers Squibb and Professor Vikas Sukhatme (Dean of Emory School of Medicine), both senior co-authors, are leading world-experts on personalized medicine approaches to support the treatment of cancer patients. Kieran is a leading oncologist with expertise in translating novel therapeutic modalities (beyond chemotherapy/irradiation) into the clinic. Plans for clinical trials involving PTUPB are underway.
Professor Sui Huang, with the Institute for Systems Biology (ISB), is known as the world's leading expert on systems biology and debris-induced tumor growth.