August | 2016 | Highlights from Graff Library

WPN Book Club & Library Services: Guest Post by Roxanne Garcia

August 30, 2016

Thank you to our guest blogger Roxanne Garcia, clinical research coordinator in the Shared Resources-Clinical Trial Office and member of the Women’s Professional Network, a Diversity Resource Group at City of Hope.

Edited by Heather Lanctot

The Women’s Professional Network (WPN) hosted their first book club meeting Friday, June 24, in one of the library conference rooms. The meeting included snacks, laughs and lively discussion on vulnerability, inspired by Daring Greatly* by Brene Brown. The library has been very supportive of this group by supplying audio books, ebooks and print copies so that members are not required to buy a book every few months. The group will be reading a new book every quarter and would love to add more people to their club! This quarter’s book is Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns) by Mindy Kaling. Would you like to borrow either of these titles from the library? Make sure to check the library catalog for both Brown and Kaling‘s books.

If you are interested in joining in the next book discussion sign up for a discussion time here.

To receive information about WPN events and activities, contact wpn@coh.org.

*Note: Brown was a keynote speaker at City of Hope’s Learning and Personal Development Week in January of 2016. This talk prompted the inclusion of her book as an option for the book club.

#TBT Spotlight on Dr. Riojun Kinosita

August 11, 2016

Please note that on July 17, 2017 we corrected a error in the third paragraph of the original post. The original text indicated that the name of the chemical was “bitter yellow”; it should have indicated “butter yellow”, per the 1971 Scope article.

In the summer of 1971, after a 50 year career in cancer research, Riojun Kinosita, M.D., Ph.D., was honored with a retirement celebration hosted by the medical center staff at City of Hope. At the time of his retirement, Kinosita had spent 20 years working at City of Hope and was the chair emeritus of Experimental Pathology.

Kinosita, born in 1893, made many contributions to the field of cancer research from the 1920s to the late 1970s. He studied at both the Imperial University Medical School in Tokyo and at Cambridge, Freiburg im Breisgau in Germany, and London. He also helped to “cultivate the next generation of leaders in Japanese cancer research” as a professor of pathology at Imperial University in first Hokkaido and then Osaka. (Ohno, 1978, 871).

Some of the research accomplishments that Kinosita achieved throughout his career included findings about carcinogens. He “demonstrated [in 1934] that a chemical called butter yellow, used to color food, induced cancer of the liver.” Kinosita also “reported, [in 1936 at the Japanese Pathology Society], that other substances, including tobacco tar, could cause cancer.” (Scope, 1971, 5). Furthermore, Kinosita headed the City of Hope Cancer Research Institute that was dedicated on July 18, 1952. (The Torch of Hope, 1952, 1). The institute contained “laboratories for experimental pathology, histology, biochemistry, microbiology, tissue culture, as well as rooms for animal breeding, medical illustrations, instruments, statistics, a library, and a conference room.” (Ibid).

References retrieved from the City of Hope Archives

(1952, June-July). Cancer research institute at City of Hope to be formally dedicated on Friday, July 18. The Torch of Hope of the City of Hope. (4)6, 1.

(1971, July/August). Dr. Kinosita feted on his retirement. Scope, 5.

Ohno, Susumu (1978, March). Obituary: Riojun Kinosita. American Association for Cancer Research. Cancer Research (38), 870-871.

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