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On the agenda at this weekend's big cancer meeting

Some of the nation’s leading cancer researchers are gathering in Chicago this weekend for the annual meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research. You can expect to see a slew of cancer research findings from the meeting over the next few days. First, here’s a look at three big topics on tap:

§ Precision medicine: It's front and center at the meeting, from a talk on how to match a person's genetic variants with precision medicine clinical trials to the presentation of an award for Boston's Dr. Pasi A. Jänne, who developed combination precision therapies for lung cancer.

§ Health disparities: There are talks on how to improve cancer screening and treatment in low-income nations, how to narrow inequities in access to personalized medicine, and how to find funding and run research on cancer disparities.

§ CRISPR: Cancer experts can’t convene without talking about the genome editing technology. CRISPR pioneer Emmanuelle Charpentier — who, along with Jennifer Doudna, showed that CRISPR-Cas9 could be used to cut and possibly edit DNA in a test tube back in 2012 — is giving a talk at the conference.

Ambitious study on transgender kids gets big funding boost

The National Science Foundation is doling out $1 million to expand an ambitious nationwide study of transgender children. University of Washington psychologist Kristina Olson is leading the study — which launched in 2013 — and has recruited more than 300 kids between ages 3 and 12. Olson aims to follow the cohort over 20 years to track their health outcomes.

Preliminary data, published in Pediatrics in 2016, found that children in the study had the same rates of depression and anxiety as non-transgender children. The children in the study had solid family support and were able to publicly live as the gender they identified with, which Olson said might suggest family support is critical in preventing mental health issues that have previously been documented in some transgender kids.

The new face on the health department's "Most Wanted" list

There’s a new face on the health department’s “Most Wanted Fugitives” list. Ebong Aloysius Tilong — who used to operate a home health care company — was paid more than $13 million in fraudulent Medicare reimbursements between 2006 and 2015. The government says it believes Tilong and his wife billed for home health services that weren’t necessary or they didn’t provide, and that they paid illegal kickbacks to patient recruiters who sent Medicare beneficiaries their way for home health care services. Tilong pleaded guilty to filing fraudulent tax returns in 2017, but disappeared before his sentencing.

Imagining the next 350 years in science and technology

At EMD Serono, the biopharmaceutical business of Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany in the U.S. and Canada, our curiosity has fueled the discovery of treatments for multiple sclerosis, infertility and cancer. That curiosity has been part of our global company’s DNA for 350 years.

This year, Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany marks its 350^th anniversary by celebrating curiosity. We work to answer some of the greatest human questions, and look forward to the next 350 years of scientific advancements. Learn more here.

Inside STAT: A new door for promising stem cell therapies

The trial is being led by Dr. Charles Cox (left) and Dr. Billy Gill.(MICHAEL STARGHILL JR FOR STAT)

A severe head injury can batter the brain, but it also can make the immune system go haywire, which can continue to damage the brain for months. Surgeons at a Houston hospital think they might have a way to prevent that continued damage: taking bone marrow cells from patients and then infusing them back into their bodies in a bid to create an anti-inflammatory response that affects the brain. The FDA just gave a new designation to the clinical trial, signaling it sees some potential in the experimental treatment. STAT’s Andrew Joseph has the story — read here.

How mitochondria manage when they have too much to do

Mitochondria, like the rest of us, have too much work to do sometimes. Among other tasks, mitochondria are responsible for importing proteins from a cell's cytoplasm that are encoded by a cell's nuclear DNA. Now, scientists have found a way that mitochondria — the powerhouses of the cell! — cope. Researchers saw that when yeast mitochondria have too many proteins to import from outside, cells start expressing genes that help clear excess proteins, lightening the load for the mitochondria. It’s not clear yet whether the mitochondria in human cells use that same tactic to lighten the load.

The industry where pot use is most prevalent

Marijuana use is most common among people who work in food service or the hotel industry, 30 percent of whom have used marijuana in the past month, according to a new analysis of pot prevalence among working adults in Colorado. Between 2014 and 2015, nearly 15 percent of adult workers in Colorado said they'd used marijuana in the past month. By comparison, roughly 7 percent of people working in health care and social services had used marijuana in the past month. The study's authors say their findings could inform policies to prevent workplace injuries tied to marijuana.