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Everything in moderation

Watching the commentaries on Fox News about President Obama’s most recent press conference, I was irritated, but not altogether surprised with the way Republicans pundits judged him as boring and dodgy while the Democrats applauded him at every turn.

My summation: I thought he was very well spoken and honest about his priorities and I didn’t really care if he came off as boring as Bill O’Reilly emphasized. It was a press conference for crying out loud.However, it seemed he darted around several key questions about his budget plan and the AIG bonuses and offered confusing projections concerning the deficit.

So where do I fall? Conservative? Liberal? The answer is none of these.

I don’t like labels as it is, but if you absolutely had to call me something, I guess it would be a moderate. Sadly, it’s a term that’s been widely misunderstood for a long time, receiving mounting criticism from pompous conservative figureheads like Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh.

“Moderates are not passionate in their ideas,” so said Rush Limbaugh during his morning radio program.

That remark was followed up by his guest, popular radio host Mark Levine, who said that moderates were really just conservatives who were abandoning their principles.

In his book, Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto, Levine explains that conservatism draws directly form the principles laid down by the founding fathers in the Constitution.

Sure, I used to consider myself a Republican, an old family inheritance, but I learned that the issues were much too important to set my faith in a blind belief of principles that don’t answer every problem we encounter. For instance, how do we really know what would the founding fathers have said about an issue like global warming?

Republicans, like Limbaugh, call it a hoax, a ploy set out on destroying the jobs of honest oil and coal workers. They say that global temperatures have only fluctuated slightly in recorded history and no atmospheric hot spots have been detected that would tend to support this theory. Proponents of the theory, like Al Gore, say atmospheric carbon levels are increasing at 1.9 parts per million every year.

I just can’t imagine that after years of expelling chlorofluorocarbons and industrial carbon into our atmosphere, we haven’t done some damage. Still, I believe there’s good science on both sides of the issue. So what is this mindset that assures millions beyond a doubt that it’s a big sham and others that we need to pour billions into clean air initiatives?

It all comes back to what it means to be a moderate. Limbaugh would have you believe a moderate is someone who is up in the air about his or her opinions, unable to make a decision on the important issues of our day. But I say a moderate is one who has strong opinions that may fall on either side of the political spectrum, one who listens to reason when determining their priorities. I know it’s a hard concept to swallow for some.

It seems like every issue now is drawn along party lines. I, for one, refuse to see the world so black and white.

I frown on abortion, I don’t think healthcare is a universal right and I’m not particularly fond of the welfare state. But I’m not a Republican.

I think science is one of our most important investments, I believe finding alternative forms of energy and I wish we would just get the hell out of Iraq. But I’m not a Democrat.

I didn’t vote for either McCain or Obama in the presidential election. I guess I’m just a sucker for underdogs. But more than that, I really just wanted to distance myself from the absurd rhetoric and mudslinging

You see, a wise man once said withdrawing in disgust is not the same thing as apathy. These days, I find I can’t withdraw enough.

Long distance relationships

Not doomed for failure, but it’s very likely

Long-distance relationships don’t always spell doom, but keep in mind that it takes two to tango. It’s basically about communication and being on the same page, but even so, it’s tough.

My first relationship morphed into a long-distance one for a summer; while he was off visiting his folks in London, I was taking summer courses at Reedley College.

It was hard but with constant e-mails and phone calls from across the globe (and despite a few misunderstandings), we made it work. I’d write poetry and he’d send little gifts.

But when he got back in August, things just weren’t the same. He had become belligerent and verbally abusive, but I’d fortunately developed a backbone.

About a year later, my next relationship was much healthier. The distance wasn’t quite so far either, only about 30 miles. It also didn’t hurt that I came back home to Fresno every weekend for a couple of dates before heading back to Reedley on Monday morning.

Then it came time to transfer to a university. I had my heart set on Sonoma State, but my boyfriend was in Fresno, plus it was cheaper to just move back in with my folks, so I chose Fresno State instead.

I eventually came to resent this decision, because it had always been a lifelong goal of mine to ditch Fresno for good. But alas, I was one of those girls who put her relationships ahead of everything else.

Several years later I was dating a dude I’ll call Jim, and I admit, I should have run in the opposite direction.

He hadn’t made a very good impression when he lied about his age, then about the number of chicks he’d slept with.

And there were even more surprises in store.

We’d only been seeing each other for a couple of months when he dropped another bombshell.
“Oh yeah, I’m moving to Reno at the end of the month.”

Neither of us wanted to break up, so we agreed to keep in touch by phone, and I’d come to visit him once he’d gotten settled.

But only a week after his move, he called to fess up about a lap dance at a strip club.
Uh, no thanks, Jim. I’m finished here.

So when my current guy dropped the news that his new job was 300 miles away, it hit me with a wave of déjà vu. My heart sank a bit.

Nevertheless, I started this latest long-distance deal with all the hope in the world, and while it wasn’t at all a repeat of Jim, it quickly became obvious that we lacked the communication skills required to make something like this work.

We ended it last week, less than two months after he moved.

If I’ve learned anything, it’s that the road to not-quite hell is paved with my good intentions, and that despite the odds, I’ve always been willing to give long-distance a shot, though I’m increasingly weary.

I know they say that absence makes the heart grow fonder, but my grandmother had her own version.

She used to say that absence makes the heart forget.

And these days, I must say, I’m inclined to agree.

One-finger salute

Culled each week from discussions in The Collegian newsroom.

Thumbs up
Spring Break!!!

Finally, oh man, finally! Even though some of us aren’t going anywhere, the thought of an entire week without classes makes us giddy with joy. So have at it, enjoy your break ’cause as soon as we come back it’s going be crunch time.

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Having holidays on weekdays

We think honoring Cesar Chavez and his work is important, but do we really have to celebrate it on a Tuesday? Because when you’re off Tuesday, who wants to be in class on Monday or Wednesday? It just makes you want to miss the entire week.

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All-nighters

Yes they may be the consequence of tad of procrastination, but we also blame the heavy work load given by professors right before spring break. And on that note, many professors still don’t understand what the week off should entail. It’s a week to party, sleep a lot, and yes, even get drunk a couple of nights. So please quit assigning papers that are due when we come back because you’ll probably get nothing but the results of all-nighters.

Wise ol’ owl

Lone senior has become leader and mentor to young pitching staff

Coming into the 2009 baseball season, senior pitcher Holden Sprague knew he had a tall task ahead of him.

Not only is there that whole defending national champions thing, but the right-hander has been unofficially labeled as the staff mentor.

That’s a lot of mentoring when you’re the only senior on the pitching staff and there are 10 new players who haven’t thrown a pitch in Division I baseball.

Now instead of playing games with camera men at the College World Series, Sprague is being a role model for a team looking to capture its fourth consecutive Western Athletic Conference (WAC) Championship.

One player Sprague has had a direct impact on is sophomore Jake Floethe.

In his first year in the starting rotation, Floethe attributes his early success to the lessons Sprague has taught him and the rest of his teammates.

“He’s a great role model,” Floethe said. “We watch him work hard during the offseason and we get to watch him pitch Friday nights and it’s great. He tears apart hitters and as a staff we just sit back there and learn from him.”

Inexperience no excuse for losses

But all of the new responsibilities and expectations haven’t affected the way Sprague approaches the game.

The Bullard High grad said that he takes an offensive mentality when pitching, because the key is attacking the mitt and just throwing strikes.

“It’s just going out there and knowing what you’re capable of and knowing that you’re the one that’s going to succeed and not the hitter,” Sprague said. “It’s just tricking your mind to the point where there is no failure and if there is failure you have to bounce back and take every pitch one at a time.”

This is something that many of the younger pitchers on this year’s staff have learned the hard way.

Fresno State has lost many games this year in the late innings due to inefficiency from pitchers coming out of the bullpen.

While a lot of that may have to do with inexperience, Sprague said that it’s not a good enough excuse.

“Every year is different, so you can’t really blame anything,” Sprague said. “You can’t blame what we do in the next few months on our experience, because we’re all pitchers and we all know what’s expected out of us and we know what to do.”

In the pressure cooker

Sprague is the only pitcher on this season’s staff to have logged more than 26 innings in a single season and started nine games for the Bulldogs last season.

Fresno State lost all four of its weekend starters from a year ago and Sprague’s duties over the last three seasons have been limited to spot starts and long relief.

Over the first two months of this season, Sprague has been the Bulldogs’ ace, posting a 2.93 ERA with a 2-0 record, but he knows he could lose that job at any time if he doesn’t perform.

“This is an opportunity for me to show what I can do and show I can help these younger guys through their inexperience,” Sprague said. “It’s something that I have noticed, my responsibilities are a lot bigger, but there is no added pressure.”

High-pressure situations have become a specialty for the Fresno native.

Last season, Sprague excelled on the game’s biggest stage, beating San Diego, sending the Bulldogs to Super Regionals and picking up a win against Georgia in game two of the College World Series finals.
Although those victories were things he will never forget, Sprague said putting 2008 in the past was key for his team this season.

“[Putting last season in the past] was easy for us this year because we had a good, solid group of guys coming back,” Sprague said. “That made it easy for us to let the past go; plus we have a whole bunch of young guys who didn’t experience that, so we knew we had a clean slate this year.”

Lifetime of training

Coach Mike Batesole knows that the learning curve will be something his young pitching staff will need to overcome, but with Sprague at the helm, he’s confident his team will be right where it needs to be come conference play.

“Sprague had nine starts last season and finished 6-2 so he’s earned the right to toe the rubber on the weekend for us,” Batesole said. “If he keeps doing well, he’ll keep that spot.”

Growing up down the road from Pete Beiden Field, Sprague said he never thought he would he be on that mound, under the lights, pitching in front of his hometown.

He remembers being 12 years old and coming to games with his friends idolizing Bob Bennett’s Diamond ’Dogs of old. Now he’s the only one out of that group of friends still playing baseball.

Sprague may not have asked for it, but his veteran presence and the way he carries himself on the mound are the model by which his young teammates are learning the Division I game.

“Whether you have a good outing or a bad outing, it’s bouncing back and knowing what you’re supposed to do that will take care of the inexperience factor right away,” Sprague said. “It’s amazing, because [pitching at Beiden Field] is something I never thought I’d be doing.”

Mendonca’s blasts, Benny’s arm lift ’Dogs

After last weekend’s four-game sweep at the hands of Loyola Marymount, the Fresno State Bulldogs needed some sort of boost.

A complete game shutout and bottom of the ninth thriller later, the Bulldogs are back above .500 and two weeks away from beginning conference play.

The Bulldogs (13-10) took three out of four games from the Lipscomb Bisons, with a doubleheader sweep on Saturday and a Sunday matinee victory.

Senior catcher Danny Grubb and junior third baseman Tom Mendonca provided the late-game heroics for Fresno State on Sunday.

With the Bulldogs down 6-3 in the bottom of the ninth, Mendonca belted a three-run, opposite-field blast to left field to tie up the game at 6-6, his 11th homer of the season.

Alan Ahmady followed with a single , while Gavin Hedstrom and Steve Detwiler loaded the bases with back-to-back bunt singles.

After Jordan Ribera popped out, Grubb came up and lined a single into left field to give the Bulldogs the game and series win.

“It could’ve been anyone today,” Grubb said. “We all stuck to the plan in the ninth inning and that plan was to zone up and look for a [high] fastball and put a good swing on it. That’s what we were doing the entire ninth inning.”

Grubb also had a firsthand account of one of the best pitching performances in Fresno State history on Saturday night.

Freshman fireballer Derek Benny faced the minimum 27 batters on Saturday night to pick up a complete game, two-hit shutout on Saturday night over Lipscomb.

Benny’s performance was the first time a Bulldog pitcher has faced the minimum number of batters in a game since 1967.

The Roseville, Calif. native was consistently touching 95 miles per hour on the radar gun and totaled eight strikeouts.

“Just being able to go out there and throw like that in front of my family was great,” Benny said. “We got a lot of runs out there, no errors on our defense and our fielders helping me out was great.”

The Diamond ’Dogs put up 10 runs behind Benny to cap off a Saturday doubleheader sweep.

Fresno State won the first game on Saturday 13-11, thanks to an 11-run fourth inning and home runs from Ribera and Mendonca.

Mendonca hit three roundtrippers this weekend, to take sole possession of second place on Fresno State’s all-time home run list at 40.

Giuseppe Chiaramonte is the Bulldogs’ all-time leader with 43.

“Records are records, if they’re set, they’re broken,” Mendonca said. “If it happens, it happens. If it doesn’t, I’m just happy to play baseball.”

Although Fresno State’s weekend had several positive notes, some of the negative trends continued to rear their ugly head, including shaky performances from the bullpen.

In the Bulldogs’ only loss this weekend, reliever Zac Bischoff surrendered a three-run homer in the top of the ninth on Friday night that led to a 10-6 defeat.

However, the Bulldogs’ biggest weakness this season may be the fact that they have to leave Beiden Field.

Fresno State is 12-4 at home, but a dismal 1-6 on the road.

Coach Mike Batesole said his team needs to learn how to win on the road if they hope to be successful when league starts on April 10.

“That’s always the last thing that the young kids learn, is how to win on the road,” Batesole said. “The team that’s going to win the WAC is the same team that wins it every year and that’s the team with the best road league record.”

The Bulldogs have an opportunity to improve that road record as they head to UC Davis on Tuesday and will come back home on Wednesday to host the Aggies.
Fresno State will host Cal State Bakersfield for a four-game series starting April 3.

The long ball

Junior Tom Mendonca has already hit 11 home runs this season. Here is a look at Fresno State’s all-time, single season home run leaders:

1) Lance Shebelut, 32 (1988)
2) G. Chiaramonte, 26 (1997)
3) Beau Mills, 22 (2005)
4) Jim Rothford, 20 (1978)
5) Randy Asadoor, 19 (1983)
Tom Mendonca, 19 (2008)
6) Pete Dalena, 17 (1982)
7) Simon Tafoya, 16 (1998)
Mike Burton, 16 (1988)
Steve Vondran, 16 (1988)
10) Pete Dalena, 15 (1981)
Derek Feramisco, 15 (1996)
Josh Labandeira, 15 (2001)

Club volleyball reaches No. 1

Despite being ranked as the No. 1 team in the nation, the Fresno State men’s volleyball team continues to be one of the most underrated programs on campus.

That might be because the team is not affiliated through the Fresno State athletic department, instead it is a campus-organized club.

The team’s 35-3 record, as of Sunday morning, puts them atop the nation and part of that is due to the competitiveness of its’ schedule and league play.

“This league has to be the most competitive in the country,” said Brian Tsukimura, who is the team’s head coach and advisor.

The Bulldogs are part of the Northern California Collegiate Volleyball League, which is composed of Sacramento State, California, Sonoma State, Santa Clara, UC Davis, Stanford, Cal Poly, Chico State and Fresno State.

The nine-team league can be dignified as the nation’s toughest, with four teams ranking in the nation’s Top 20.

And for the first time in school history, Fresno State hosted the NCCVL league championship tournament on Sunday.

“We just wanted to play our game and play consistently,” Tsukimura said.

The first game of the tournament the Bulldogs took on Sacramento State, whom they had lost just one set to all season. A win would advance the team to face the winner of the Cal and UC Davis match.

Results of the match were not available for print. Prior to the start of the tournament, senior Brett Gillen said his team just needed to focus on their own play.

“It doesn’t matter what our opponent does, we just have to stay calm and collective,” Gillen said . “We just have to go out and play hard.”

The most impressive thing about the men’s volleyball team is that their success on a national level has been reached without the help that most other athletic programs receive.

While the club does receive money from Associated Student, Inc. (ASI) and IRA, it does not have near the same budget as other athletic teams at Fresno State.

Each player pays $500 to play and must buy their own plane ticket for traveling.

In addition to cost being an obstacle for the team’s success, so is time. The team practices twice a week, but with gym space tight, they often can’t practice until 8 p.m. or 9 p.m. on school nights. Practice can end anywhere from 10 p.m. to midnight.

Only a select few universities nationwide have men’s volleyball programs run through the NCAA. However, there are over 320 universities with club volleyball programs and that is where the true prestige lies, according to Tsukimura.

To the members of the Fresno State men’s volleyball team, it isn’t an issue not being part of the NCAA or receiving much exposure.

“It would be nice to get a little more recognition,” said Gillen. “But our fans know who we are and volleyball is such a tight community.”

It is this type of spirit and fight that Tsukimura says makes his team possibly the best team he has ever coached. As a coach, he said, that motivating his athletes isn’t a problem because they have to work through the obstacles of being a club sport, which in itself shows their true desire to play.

“The thing about guys who do club is that they are there for the love of the sport,” said Tsukimura.
“They don’t need any motivation.”

But more than anything, he believes that the chemistry of his team is what has brought them to such a high ranking.

“If you asked me to rank them in athleticism with all the other teams I have coached, they would be in the bottom half,” said Tsukimura. “But the team chemistry is like no other team I’ve ever been around.”

Track and field head south for Cal-Nevadas

In preparation for the Cal-Nevada Championships, Fresno State track and field coach Scott Winsor had to address the “C” word to his team while in practice.

“Our kids are going to see some good competition – probably competition that they haven’t seen yet,” Winsor said. “But that’s what we need.”

The Cal-Nevada Championships is one of the marquee meets for the Fresno State track and field team every year. This year, the Bulldogs have to travel to UCLA to compete against some of the top track programs in the state of California and Nevada.

The trip to Los Angeles will mark a first in the Cal-Nevada meet. The Championships will be held on the UCLA campus. Scott Winsor will also experience his first trip to UCLA.

“I’ve never competed at UCLA,” Winsor said. “I competed at Mount Sac every year for 20 years, but never at UCLA.”

Winsor still believes that being in Los Angeles will be a benefit for his team as the season progresses.

“I guess it’s a great venue and a beautiful track,” Winsor said. “Its kind of like the old basketball saying ‘the basket is ten feet high.’ The track is 400 meters, that’s what they’ll run on and that’s what we’ll do.”

For Winsor and the Bulldogs’ track and field squad, the competition level will be huge, especially with a couple of Pac-10 teams involved.

“It’s going to be a heck of a meet,” Winsor said. “It is every year.”

Winsor said that the team needed some time to prepare for the Cal-Nevada meet and has been impressed with the overall progression.

“We’ve had a good couple of weeks here,” Winsor said. “Last week was very good for us. Our decathletes had a heck of a day, so we are looking to build on that. The kids know that we need to step it up and get better every week.”

Not only do the Bulldogs need to step it up every week, they also want to win the Western Athletic Conference (WAC) title and then send some of their athletes to the NCAA Regional.

“Our minimum goal is to win WAC,” Winsor said. “But above and beyond that, we want to make sure that we are prepared to get to the regional’s and then prepare to get out of regionals and into the NCAAs. This is just another opportunity to show the kids how to do that.”

One key element on the women’s side for the Bulldogs is WAC individual champion Tierra Hilliard, who will be participating in the sprint competition. Hilliard is familiar with some of the competition in the Cal-Nevada meet.

“We saw a few teams last week,” Hilliard said. “There’s like 30 schools, so there’s going to be good competition everywhere.”

Hilliard is content with being a conference individual champion, but she is looking to have more results during the Cal-Nevada meet and beyond.

“It felt really good to win the WAC and I’m going to go out and try to do it again in the 200 and 400 this year,” Hilliard said.

On the men’s side, senior jumper Erik Fossen wants to use the Cal-Nevada meet to reach the NCAA regional. He is competing in the high, long and triple jump.

“I’m hoping to get one regional qualifying mark, hopefully all three,” Fossen said. “For long and triple I’ll go against a couple guys from UCLA and a couple guys from Northridge. There should be some good competition for long jump because I’m in the last flights, so it should be really good competition to push me even further.”

A look at the structure of ASI

As the Associated Students, Inc. (ASI) elections draw near for the 2009-10 school year, students might want an idea of just exactly what the organization does and how it works.

The student government mimics much of the current U.S. system of democracy, but is altered to fit the university’s needs.

It is easiest to break it down by branches.

Executive Branch

The executive branch ranks in the order of president, executive vice president and vice president of finance and according to the ASI bylaws “the executive officers shall, at all times while holding office, satisfy the eligibility and qualification requirements established by the Chancellor of The California State University.”

Vice president of finance is a position characterized by the management of the ASI budget, which is approximately $650,000, depending on student fees.

“It is a very stressful position because work doesn’t end when you leave the office,” said Vice President of Finance Lauren Johnson.

“I have to keep track of all ASI expenditures.”

As chief financial officer, Johnson gives advice to senators about the appropriateness of their expenditures. The position also requires the creation of the following year’s budget.

Johnson works closely with executive vice president Jessica Sweeten. According to article two, section three “the executive vice president shall be selected by a simple majority of the voting members of the senate each academic year.”

The position requires the executive vice president to cast the deciding vote of any ties in senate decision-making and in senate meetings is the senate chair. In the event that the president is unable to fulfill his or her duties, the executive vice president will fill the vacancy.

Serving as the current ASI president is Graham Wahlberg.

According to ASI bylaws the president can fill vacant positions that are then confirmed by a simple majority of the senate, can veto any action made by the senate, can issue executive orders and any is responsible for other duties “prescribed by the student senate.

“[University officials] treat my position as an equal,” said Wahlberg.

“I call to light what we see them doing wrong or what we disagree with.”

As head of ASI, Wahlberg is given the ability to create a president’s cabinet. However, citing a small budget and other important things to focus on, Wahlberg said he did not create a personal staff for the year.

“You have to be very careful with something that powerful,” said Wahlberg.

According to the president’s handbook, 75 percent of time is spent in meetings, speaking and making public appearances while 15 percent is for special appearances and 10 percent is spent on e-mails and making phone calls.

Legislative Branch

The legislative branch currently consists of 15 senators, eight of which are senators of colleges and seven of which are senators at-large.

Next year will see the addition of two new senators.

Starting this fall, the senator of auxiliary will be changed to the senator of legislative affairs and there will be a senator serving as a Greek liaison.

All senate members are dignified as representatives for the constituents of their specific areas, and in charge of being the student voice to administration.

ASI bylaws state that senators shall associate themselves with issues that directly affect students and are to approve the yearly budget. In addition, in order to override a president’s veto the senate needs a two-thirds vote.

In past years, senate members were required by ASI to complete three projects a year.

However, when Wahlberg entered office, he believed that the senate needed to be working closer with the student body.

Therefore, he made it mandatory for senators to meet with their constituents and department faculty once a week.

“All these senators are really taking this to heart and doing such an amazing job,” said Wahlberg.

“They are starting to become infectious on campus.”

Working in close partnership with their constituents, senators bring their concerns and proposed ideas to senate meetings.

Meetings are held every other Wednesday and are run in strict, professional manner. Senators each give updates about the concerns and future plans of their constituents.

The two most important aspects on the agenda are the actions and information.

Actions are items that the senate votes on, such as issuing money to a senator for a college event. Informational items are simply topics discussed in the meetings, but are not voted on.

In addition, another chief responsibility at these meetings is to pass or deny solutions.

If the university decides to make any new policies or increase any fees, then the senate votes either for or against the proposal.

Judicial Branch

Five people make up the judiciary and all have lifetime terms, which means as long as they are a student enrolled at the university they are part of the court.

Members of the court are in constant communication through e-mail said Amanda Fine, who is in her first year on the court.

The members do not meet on a regular basis until the end of the school year when election season is near.

According to the ASI bylaws, “Any member of the Associated Students who desires to bring an issue to the student court may due so by submitting a written statement to the Chief Justice, in care of the Associated Students’ office.”

While the judicial branch deals with discrepancies between the legislative and executive branch, they mostly deal with election violations.

“We really only deal with issues when it comes to the elections,” Fine said.

“We are objective individuals who aren’t really involved in ASI and can look in from the outside to ensure the integrity of the elections.”

Other than assuring that candidates follow the rules of the election, the members of the judicial branch don’t have any other major responsibilities.

The structure of ASI is not overly-complicated, but at the same time it does take time to understand the specifics.

Those involved in student government have high hopes that students will better understand the purpose of it all to get more involved.

Campus’ pancreatic cancer research leads the way

As the average lifespan of Americans increases with each generation, the likelihood of an individual developing cancer, the second leading cause of death in the United States, increases with each passing day.

“It is very likely that cancer will surpass heart disease as the leading cause of deaths in the United States over the next couple of years,” said Dr. Jason Bush, assistant professor of cancer biology at California State University, Fresno.

Non-melanoma skin cancer is the most prevalent form of cancer in the United States, with more than one million new cases expected to develop in 2009, but it is not the most deadly.

Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma, pancreatic cancer, is considered the most deadly form of cancer, with less than five percent of individuals expecting to survive past five years after initial diagnosis.

During the past three years, Bush has been establishing a cancer research laboratory at Fresno State, getting recognition as part of a campus team from the National Institutes of Health, which has recently received an infrastructure grant worth $4.5 million over the course of five years for molecular analyses at CSU Fresno.

His laboratory consists of several projects running simultaneously, with themes such as defining the differences between metastatic bone-seeking and metastatic brain-seeking breast cancer cells, but he has one project dedicated to finding biomarkers for early stages of pancreatic cancer.

Research targets early signs of pancreatic cancer

Since pancreatic cancer is usually diagnosed when it has developed into stage-three or stage-four cancer, it has a very high mortality rate.

“It is also a terribly under-funded area of research,” said Bush, which has limited the research needed to find clinical diagnostic techniques for early detection.

Under the leadership of Rowena Chu, a senior graduate student in Bush’s lab and a biology master’s candidate at CSU Fresno, the development over the past two years of secretome analyses (protein signatures secreted by the pancreatic cancer cells) for pancreatic cancer has reached a point where it can progress into its second phase.

Ultimately, Chu and her teammates on the project are trying to analyze and isolate specific soluble proteins and secretions from cultured cancer cells of the pancreas, called ductal cells, to find biomarkers that would indicate the early developments of pancreatic cancer.

In the first phase, Chu and her lab associates have been trying to establish in-vitro pancreactic ductal cell culture lines of acini, which are the glandular portions of the pancreas that secrete enzymes to help dissolve your food within the intestines. Development of this model system has allowed them to isolate specific proteins to determine whether or not they are indicators of pancreatic cancer.

Now that they have established their culture lines, they will be comparing them to primary cells from tumors that have been removed from patients with pancreatic cancer, to compare the secreted protein signatures or ‘secretome’ by the cells from cancer patients.

Once they have established a correlation between their culture line and that of primary cells from tumors of pancreatic cancer patients, they will then compare with that of pancreatic juices released from patients with pancreatic cancer.

The analysis of the pancreatic juices will allow Chu and her associates to develop a method that will allow physicians to test an individual for early pancreatic cancer, after obtaining a sample of the pancreatic juice through a procedure called endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography (ERCP).

‘Community’ of researchers tireless

“Trying to find a translation from the lab to the clinic,” Bush said, should be the driver when it comes to biomedical research. Without this connection, it is nearly impossible to apply what has been done in the lab to actual practice.

Though the past two years have been exhausting for Chu and her team and the research is long from over, the benefits of the outcome outweigh the numerous nights of little sleep.

“I often feel there should be two of me,” said Chu. “But I always look at the bigger picture and keep in mind what I am here to do, which outweighs any drawbacks to the responsibilities I have in the lab.”

For David Wells, an undergraduate research assistant in Bush’s lab, working in the lab is not a daunting, but rather an environment where everyone is working together for a common goal.

“Everyone in the lab is very inviting,” said Wells, “We each have our own projects, but we are also learning about everyone else’s project at the same time. We work in a little learning community, and try to help each other out when we can.”

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