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OUDAILY.COM » CHECK OUT AN INTERNATIONAL MAP OF SWINE FLU CASES, AS WELL AS FACTS AND LINKS TO SWINE FLU STORIES ONLINE AT OUDAILY.COM/SWINEFLU
OU moves with caution as swine flu hits the state CONFIRMED SWINE FLU CASES
Two cases of swine flu have been confirmed in Cleveland County
OKLAHOMA COUNTY CITY OF NORMAN
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CLEVELAND COUNTY
DANE BEAVERS The Oklahoma Daily
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GRAPHIC BY AMANDA TURNER
State Regents accused of censorship Student advisory board says changes to minutes are in violation of state law LEIGHANNE MANWARREN The Oklahoma Daily
A student-run advisory board has accused the staff of the Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education of attempting to censor their annual report and violating Oklahoma’s Open Meeting Act. Rosie Lynch, University of Tulsa sociology senior and advisory board chairwoman, along with three other board members and the president of the Oklahoma Student Government Association, signed a letter to the regents’ chancellor and stated the situation was “completely unacceptable.” The letter’s authors accused Vice Chancellor of Student Affairs Kermit McMurry of altering the minutes, records and actions taken during the April 19 Student Advisory Board meeting without students’ knowledge. Lynch said McMurry omitted approximately one page of the original report and said she was told McMurry made the changes to make the students look better. Calls to McMurry were not immediately returned. State regents spokesman Ben Hardcastle said the changes were made to a draft, not the final report, and that it is normal to pass drafts back and forth with changes. Lynch said the advisory board did not intend to attack McMurry’s character but they felt his actions concerning the report were wrong. “I appreciate [McMurry’s] years of work with other students but we felt it was not right that he removed passages from the report without telling us,” she said. In the letter, the advisory board accused McMurry of being disruptive during meetings and sometimes sleeping through them. The letter stated, “If our idea was deemed controversial, the vice chancellor would talk down to us in a similar condescending manner, reminding us not to go off ‘half-cocked’ and ‘without real research.’” The authors of the letter accused McMurry of questioning the board members’ intelligence and research, said Nicholas Harrison, OU graduate student and advisory board vice chairman. Hardcastle said it is unfair of the REGENTS CONTINUES ON PAGE 2
DOCUMENT Read the letter sent to the State Regents online.
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Cleveland County officials announced the first cases of swine flu Thursday, and OU officials say they are monitoring the situation but are not yet changing plans for commencement ceremonies or future study abroad programs. OU press secretary Jay Doyle stated in an e-mail “we continue to monitor and evaluate the situation,” after the news that two cases of swine flu had been confirmed in the county was
broken on OUDaily.com Thursday afternoon. Shari Kinney, administrator of the Cleveland County Health Department, said Thursday that officials believe the exposure of the two residents to the rest of the county’s population has been limited. “One [female with swine flu] is a high school student and one is an adult female and both of them, when they became ill, stayed home. They saw their physician and they have both recovered,” Kinney said. Kinney said she expects to see more cases of the virus confirmed in Cleveland County, and there have been more cases of seasonal flu this year than in previous years. FLU CONTINUES ON PAGE 2
PROFESSOR STRIVES FOR NEW BREAST CANCER TREATMENT Proteins used to find, kill cancerous cells CADIE THOMPSON The Oklahoma Daily
An OU professor is building biochemical treatments for breast cancer that would speed up the process of targeting only cancerous cells and increase the efficiency of treatment. Roger Harrison, chemical engineering professor, has studied for more than 10 years how to use proteins to treat cancer, and has recently developed two different forms of therapy that find and target only cancerous cells throughout the body. His treatments are designed to not only find and kill tumor cells, but also to prevent the cancer from spreading. “With current treatments, you have a cancer drug and that cancer drug goes all throughout your whole body, so it has toxic effects on normal cells,” Harrison said. “But this therapy won’t go in the normal part of your body; it will just bind to the tumor. The idea is to have it be locally where it’s needed in the tumor.” Harrison’s research still is in the preclinical stage, though. Dr. Shubham Pant, a hematology-oncology specialist with OU Physicians, also is involved in targeted cancer treatment and said he has seen a positive response from patients who have used targeted therapy for breast cancer. He said in trials, women who received targeted treatment with chemotherapy lived longer than women who did not. Targeted cancer therapy research currently is more focused on treating breast cancer patients because of the cancer’s prevalence, Pant said.
AMY FROST/ THE DAILY
Roger Harrison, chemical engineering professor, sits in the lab inside of Sarkey’s Energy Center Thursday. According to the American drug therapy and the other in- well, but in this treatment the enCancer Society in 2009, an esti- volves nanotubes and photody- zyme is attached to nanotubes. mated 27 percent of the 713,220 namic therapy. Nanotubes are simple rod-like cancer cases in women are cases The targeted enzyme in both structures made up of carbon of breast cancer. That is over treatments is Annexin, which only molecules and bonds, and are 192,500 cases of breast cancer in attaches to cancer cells. used to transmit heat from infrathe United States. In the treatment that involves red light to the cancer cells. The “Women have been the driv- pro-drug therapy, where a drug heat kills the cancer cells, and ing force behind breast cancer is put into the body but remains causes blood to clot, which cuts research,” said Pant. “They have a ineffective until it is triggered off the tumors’ blood supply, killgreat voice in the community. It’s by an enzyme, Annexin is fused ing the tumors. the women who take control of with another enzyme called Although targeted cancer treattheir disease and it really helps us Methioninase to form one pro- ment is a growing medical trend, out in a big way.” tein. Methioninase is the enzyme the enzyme and pro-drug therapy Although Harrison specifically that triggers the pro-drug and Harrison is working on could offer is focused on using his research to converts it to a toxic cancer treat- a more efficient, speedier treattreat breast cancer, he said in the ing agent. Methioninase also ment of cancer cells. future his research could be used works to kill the tumor by cutting One of the problems with using to treat other cancers. off its access to essential amino pro-drug therapy to treat cancer is Both of Harrison’s treatments acids. how the drugs are delivered. involve using targeted enzymes, The other treatment requires but one treatment requires pro- the targeted enzyme Annexin as CANCER CONTINUES ON PAGE 2
State trying to decide direction of transportation funds Choice lies between highway or railway expansion CLARK FOY The Oklahoma Daily
The transportation stimulus package recently issued by President Barack Obama is fueling a debate over wether Oklahoma should invest in highway infrastructure or high-speed railways. Oklahoma received $465 million as part of the federal stimulus package for transportation projects. Of that money, $357 million is being put towards the state highway system. Obama’s new stimulus has allotted about $8.1 billion to spend on the high-speed rail
and mass transit systems, but states still are waiting on the guidelines to apply for the funding, according to Gary Ridley, director of the Oklahoma Department of Transportation. Ridley said the state will not make a decision on whether to apply until the guidelines are released, which he hopes will be in June. “I think that as time goes on and population density increases, you will see more movement for mass transit of some kind,” Ridley said. “Everyone needs to understand with mass transit, it has to be convenient, dependable, affordable and subsidized.” Despite a growing population density, construction the new I-40 cross-town continues, an expressway that may replace a portion of the unused Union Station in Oklahoma City.
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This, according to Tom Elmore, executive director of the North American Transport Institute, is a step in the wrong direction. “Here’s the reality: No state is, at this moment, more “shovel ready” than Oklahoma for advanced rail development,” Elmore said in an e-mail. “State government here owns nearly 900 miles of railway, mostly radiating out from the last grand urban rail passenger center in the West remaining unused today with all its original yard space intact.” This potential, Elmore said, can be tapped to boost the economy. A new high-speed rail transit through Oklahoma would create more jobs, lower highway maintenance costs and FUNDS CONTINUES ON PAGE 2
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