LehighWeek Volume 13, Issue 23

              Chicago in residence
Artist to discuss Holocaust,
women in art
See Page 3
Volume 13, Issue 23
Lehig hWeek
The campus digest for innovation, news and events
South Mountaineer
Wrestlers win EIWA,
M/W hoopsters fall in Patriot
See page 4
March 8,2000
Lehigh, St. Luke's
identify enzyme
as predictor of
cancer survival
A seven-year study by Lehigh and
St. Luke's Hospital has found
the enzyme Cathepsin D to be a
userful predictor of survival rates
among women who have been
treated for lymph node-positive
breast cancer.
The researchers' article,
"Analysis of Cathepsin D in Human Breast Cancer: Usefulness of
the Processed 3 lkDa Active Form
of the Enzyme as a Prognostic Indicator in Node-Negative and
Node-Positive Patients,"has been
accepted for publication in Breast
Cancer Research and Treatment.
Since 1992, the researchers
have checked 134 St. Luke's Hospital breast cancer patients for
Cathepsin D, which breaks down
proteins. The function of the enzyme is not clear, but researchers believe it is abnormally secreted in large amounts when a
cell becomes cancerous. When a
woman develops breast cancer,
Cathepsin D breaks down the
surrounding tissues and allows
the tumor to spread through the
lymph nodes or blood.
In their study, researchers also
examined tissues from 227 patients with benign breast disease
and from 28 with normal tissue
(derived from breast reductions).
Jack Alhadeff, professor of
biochemistry, isolated Cathepsin D from the tissue samples,
distinguishing an active form
from an inactive form. He found
high levels of the active form in
women whose cancer recurred,
and much lower levels in women
with benign tumors.
"Of the breast cancer patients
in the study, 12 of the women have
passed away from the disease and
all 12 were in the high-risk group
based on the level of Cathepsin D
in their tissue," says Alhadeff. "We
are following those in the high-risk
group to check on recurrence."
"In the future, determining
who does and does not have high
levels of Cathepsin D may determine the type of treatment they
receive for breast cancer," says
Lee Riley, medical director of St.
Luke's Cancer Center and director of surgical research for St.
Luke's Hospital. "Right now we
have no real way of knowing with
certainty who will and won't have
a recurrence, so we treat the disease aggressively with a combination of surgery, chemotherapy, radiation and drugs like tamoxifen."
The study could also help researchers develop a drug to stop
the active form of Cathepsin D
from enabling the spread of cancer, says Alhadeff.
The project was led by Alhadeff,
Riley and Marianne Lange, for-
Please See ENZYME, Page 2
IPD students invited again
to Smithsonian museum
For the second year in a row, a
team of students in the Integrated Product Development
(IPD) program has been invited
to exhibit a product it designed
and made at the annual conference of the National Collegiate
Inventors and Innovators Alliance (NCIIA).
The event, dubbed "March
Madness for the Mind," will be
held March 8-10 at the
Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C. The annual exhibit of student inventions features models of new
products designed and made by
13 teams of student inventors
representing universities in California, New York, Colorado, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and
Nevada.
Seven Lehigh students will
exhibit a Karate Scoring Apparatus, a wireless device that
transmits radio signals to a
computer to determine when contestants in a karate contest score
points. The students have designed the product under the guidance of Arkady Voloshin, professor of mechanical engineering
and mechanics.
Contestants using the apparatus wear a vest containing electronic sensors and gloves associated with a transmitter operating at a selected frequency and
pressure sensitive area. When a
valid blow is struck, a target area
on the vest transmits a signal.
The computer receives both a
strike and a target signal to indicate a score.
Members of the team are
Bryan Capobianco, Michael
Frey, Piper Hueffed, Karen
Mocarski, Laura Scanlan and
Brett Snyder, all seniors majoring in mechanical engineering,
and David D'Alessandro, an
M.B.A. student.
Industry adviser for the
project is Jack Plesnik, an entrepreneur from Tobyhanna, Pa.,
who holds a U.S. patent for the
device. The project was funded by
NCIIA and the Ben Franklin
Technology Center, to which the
student team will submit a business plan for start-up funding.
In IPD classes, students from
business, engineering, and arts
and sciences form teams to design, make and draw up marketing plans for new products that
are are sponsored and funded by
industrial companies. So far, students have completed 100
projects, including a mountain
bike front suspension that was
displayed at last year's. NCIIA
conference. The team that designed and built that project has
Photo Courtesy IPD Program
Pushing his buttons
Piper Hueffed and Brett Snyder try out the karate scoring
aparatus that they helped make in their IPD class.
been invited to an exhibit of student bicycle inventions at the
Smithsonian in May.
NCIIA, funded by the
Lemelson Foundation of Reno,
Nevada, gives grants to colleges
to set up teams of student inventors.
The Smithsonian's Lemelson
Center was established in 1995
with a gift from the Lemelson
Foundation, a private philanthropic organization founded by
Jerome Lemelson (1923-1997),
whose 500 patented inventions
covered a wide range of technologies, including flexible manufacturing systems and machine-vision systems. The latter gave rise
to the invention of the bar-coding systems used to scan store
prices.
Zoellner gala to feature
trumpeter and pianist
Virtuoso trumpeter Sergei
Nakariakov will perform
with the Bamberg Symphony
Chamber Orchestra at "Gala-
2000," a        black-tie
fundraising concert at the
Zoellner Arts Center on Sunday, April 9, at 7 p.m.
Nakariakov, 22, who has
performed in Europe and
North America, will play
Mozart's Concerto No. 4 for
horn and orchestra on the
flugelhorn. He will join his
sister, pianist Vera
Nakariakova, in
Shostakovich's Concerto No.
1 for piano and orchestra,
which has an elaborate trumpet part.
Nakariakov has released
seven CDs since signing a recording contract with Teldec
Classics International when
he was 14. Nakariakova has
performed as soloist and
chamber musician at festivals in Canada and Japan.
The two perform regularly in
Europe.
Tickets are $100 for prime
concert seating, $250 for
prime concert seating and the
post-concert reception and
$400 for the pre-concert cocktails and dinner, beginning at
4:30 p.m. in the Zoellner courtyard, concert and reception.
For more information, call
Susan Vengrove, director of
development for the arts, at
x85322 or 800-523-0565.
Web site
responds to
user demand
Off-campus viewership has increased dramatically and hundreds of Web pages have been
added, since Lehigh's two new
home pages made debuted in
late December, and tinkering
should soon expand the range of
the university's search engines.
Visits to some sites, especially the admissions pages, have
increased by 35 percent over last
year. Visitors come from nearly
every nation and continent, but
are predominantly from North
America with concentrations in
Pennsylvania, Virginia, California, New York, New Jersey,
Florida, Maryland, Massachusets,
Connecticut and Washington D.C.
Another popular destination
is the athletics department
home page, which receives more
than 16,500 visitors a month.
Most visitors enter Lehigh's
site through one of two
homepages - a start page for external constituents, or an alternate page that highlights relevant news and Web-based services for people on campus. Combined, the two pages are viewed
over 400,000 times per month.
"We've never had this kind of
timely and detailed information
available on the site," said
Audra Gaugler, university relations editor and content manager
for the new Web site. "Over 1,000
new pages have been created and
as many as 20 new stories per
week are being added."
The shift to a more market-
driven Web site results from a
1998 study advising that pages
be designed to meet the specific
information needs of Lehigh's
constituents, and that Lehigh
join with technology firms to
meet that goal.
"The single largest complaint
with the" previous site was that
visitors couldn't find out what
was happening at the university," said Steve Oblas, director
of design resources for university
relations and project director for
the Web initiative.
Oblas credits the new, easy-
to-use content-management system that allows staff writers to
publish work instantly to information categories ranging from
academics and alumni, to research, news and sports.
Most changes to the site were
made in response to comments
by users. For example, through a
partnership with Embark.com, a
leading student recruitment Web
site, prospective undergraduate
and graduate students can now
apply online to any program in
Lehigh's four colleges.
While refinements and new
features are continuously being
considered, some new initiatives
Please See WEB SITE, Page 3
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