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Thursday, O c tober 5, 2017 | Vo l u m e 1 2 2 | I s s u e 1 5
April Torres / Daily Lobo / @i_apreel
Chile ristra crafters show visitors how to create the traditional pieces at this year’s 45th Annual Harvest Festival at El Rancho de las Golondrinas on Oct. 1, 2017. Las Golondrinas had “villages” set throughout the ranch to demonstrate life during the 18th and 19th centuries.
SEE PHOTO STORY PAGES 6 AND 7
What’s next for DACA recipients UNM begins testing new cancer treatment By Rebecca Brusseau @r_brusseau
Following the proposed rescission of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program — with a six month delay — by President Donald Trump, DACA recipients had to scramble to file their renewal paperwork before Thursday, the deadline set by the administration. The U.S. Citizen and Immigration Services gave instructions that all renewal requests sent via mail must have been received by Thursday, Oct. 5, and the USCIS will not be accepting any requests received beyond this date. In order to meet this deadline, workshops and “DACAthons” were held through the last day of September throughout Albuquerque, aiming to provide information and guidance for those needing help in seeking renewal. The imposition of the deadline has caused many DACA beneficiaries a great deal of stress. “This is an unfair, arbitrary deadline,” said Karla Molinar of the New Mexico Dream Team, an advocacy group for DACA recipients. “There’s no need to make the deadline so harsh. This issue hits low-income and rural
By Madison Spratto @Madi_Spratto
Diana Cervantes / Daily Lobo / @dee_sea_
UNM student Jorge Guerrero raises a NM Dream Team Flag on Sept. 5, 2017 in support of the DACA program. Trump recently announced the rescission of DACA with a six month delay, asking Congress to take action.
communities the hardest. It is a lack of humanity to give the people that need assistance the most the least amount of time.” There have been issues in trying to reach all DACA recipients, Molinar said, as some who are eligible for renewal and live in low-income or rural areas may not be informed of their options until it’s too late. “We wanted to help as many people as possible before the
On the Daily Lobo website GOELDNER and MALER: Football — Richard McQuarley feature
deadline, and we wanted to provide as much information on DACA as we could in this amount of time,” Molinar said, referencing the desperation of those who have been scrambling to renew their documents in time. According to Listo New Mexico’s website, there are almost 7,000 DACA recipients in the state, and following the new executive order, fewer than 1,500 of them are eligible
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DACA page 9
The University of New Mexico Comprehensive Cancer Center successfully completed the first in-human testing of a promising new cancer drug called BXQ-350 that is meant to target solid malignant tumors. Dr. Olivier Rixe has been involved in the development of BXQ-350 from the early stages of its conception and is the director of the clinical trial at UNM. “You have a lot of steps with the (U.S. Food and Drug Administration),” he said. “It’s almost been 10 years from the initial concept to the first patients treated.” The drug works by targeting a protein called phosphatidylserine, also known as PS, that is usually present in the inner cell membrane and plays a key role in cell signaling. Rixe said in contrast to healthy cells, the PS protein is expressed on the outer membrane of cancerous cells.
“We don’t know why, but when cells become cancerous, there is a flip-flop of PS to the external part of the membrane,” he said. BXQ-350 is constructed to specifically bind to PS proteins expressed on the outside of cancerous cells to then induce apoptosis — meaning cell death. UNM Cancer Center is the lead institution for the BXQ-350 trials with three other universities participating: the Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center, the University of Cincinnati Barrett Center and the University of Kentucky Markey Cancer Center. Now that their application for the Investigational New Drug Process from the FDA is approved, Rixe and constituents can create a trial protocol to take the drug “from the bench to the bedside.” The recent phase 1A clinical trial is the first in-human administration and is designed to study the safety of the drug, to find the proper active dosage through biopsies of tumors and to see “if (they) hit the target,” Rixe said.
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Cancer page 3
MALER: Football — Amid backlash, Davie supports players who kneeled during national anthem VALVERDE: Review — “War of the Planet of the Apes” at the SUB’s Southwest Film Center