Dr. Evan Harris Walker, President of Walker Cancer Research Institute since its inception in 1981, passed away on August 17, 2006. Walker’s wife, Helen Marie Walker, has taken over as WCRI President.   The WCRI has initiated a new Research Program funding a study in collaboration with the Department of Engineering at Florida State University - Florida A&M University at the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory, to study high magnetic field effects on cancer cell developmental chemistry. This colaboration brings together Dr. Ching-Jen Chen, Dean of the Florida State University/Florida A&M University Engineering Department, Professor Yousef Haik in the Biomagnetic Laboratory in the FSU/FAMU Engineering Department, and Ms. Pilarinou of the WCRI Florida Natural Products Division. In this collaboration, successful results have been obtained at field strengths higher than ever before used in such investigations. It has been found that high strength magnetic fields can alter the functioning of many enzymes that control much of the dividing cell's growth activity. Since high enzymatic activity characterizes the rapid division of cells in cancer tissue, there exists a significant potential for the control of cancer growth by means of such magnetic fields directed onto specific regions of cancerous growth.   "Linkages" is the name of a major collaborative program with the WCRI, Florida State University, Florida A&M University, the Florida Department of Agriculture and the Florida Department of Corrections. This program is directed to the utilization of Florida agricultural resources: those of the two Tallahassee Universities, manpower and resources of the corrections facilities of Florida, land made available by the Department of Agriculture, and the research activities of the WCRI in the development of new agricultural products of value to the pharmaceutical industry. One significant development coming out of this program was the Luffa Project, a plant having a multitude of uses, including its interest to cancer research. In the photo, Governor Lawton Chiles holds a presentation of a sample extract product resulting from the Project.   Collaboration between Professor Marina Kouladi, PhD of the Department of Pharmacognocy, University of Athens, Athens, Greece, and the WCRI professional staff had led to the finding of potential new anti-cancer drugs, published as : "Cytotoxic activities of Hypericum species on brine shrimps and human cancer cell lines," by M Kouladi, RB Badisa, P Baziou, SK Chaudhuri, and E Pilarinou. (2001). These findings derive from a much larger study providing a significant additional body of natural products chemicals--chemicals extracted and characterized from 150 East European plant species, at the present count--that have been extensively tested. Of these 30 presently show promise in our anti-cancer pharmaceuticals screening trials. Professor Kouladi recently visited WCRI and FSU, presenting a talk on her current research activities.