Multimedia Reporting (Fred-Musser)

Geneva Diamond, in her mid-40s, has three tattoos of medieval artwork, the focus of her Ph.D studies. She received her first tattoo when she was 25 and plans to get more in the next few years. While she works in an academic setting, her tattoos suit her style.

Reilly Pharo, a 20-year-old college student, has one tattoo of an elephant that commemorates her grandmother. Pharo is a polite college girl from an upper-class family. She has no plans to get another tattoo or tell her father.

Lance Tuck, an artist at Big Daddy Cadillac’s Tattoos and Piercing, said the norm of only bikers and sailors getting tattoos has faded over the past decade. Tattooing has become safer and acceptable enough amidst the more pedestrian life that people like Diamond and Pharo have become nearly half the tattoo market.

“There is this idea that tattoos are for the criminal element. I do a lot of tattoos for doctors, attorneys, police officers, firefighters and a surprising number of women. People are getting tattoos for themselves,” Tuck said.

While Big Daddy Cadillac’s tattoo shop focuses more on the traditional tattoo crowd, Tucks said about one-third of his business has become college students. As he filled in a large black tattoo on a gentleman with a shaved head and clad in army boots, black pants and a tight white undershirt, Tuck said he gets most of his business by word of mouth.

“I can do seven to eight a day, or I might take almost all day to just do one. It all depends,” Tuck said.

Big Daddy Cadillac’s charges $100 an hour to tattoo. Tuck said it is difficult to predict how long a tattoo will take. He tries to work with clients to get done what they want. Skin Illustrations, another tattoo shop in Lawrence, tends to create charges more by the size of the work and the detail involved. Diamond said price plays a big part in the timing of her tattoos. She said she likes to wait a long time between tattoos and think about them a lot before committing.

“For me, I get them when I have the money, because tattoos are expensive.” Diamond said. “I like to wait a long time between tattoos because they are permanent, so I want to get it right.”

Tattooing has made great progress in safety over the past years. Today only New Mexico, South Dakota and Washington D.C. do not regulate tattooing. Tuck insisted that anyone looking into a tattoo artist should check for a state issued license for tattooing.

The primary risk of a tattoo lies in infection. If clients do not take proper care of a newly acquired tattoo, it can become infected. Tuck said maintenance of a tattoo in the first seven to 10 days is critical to good health.

“Generally, you don’t have to do much. Just keep lotion or ointment on it for a few days. After the ink establishes itself in the tissue and binds to the collagen, you’re set,” Tuck said.

Many publications claim tattooing has influenced the HIV outbreak or contributes to the spread of hepatitis, but the CDC reports that statistics do not uphold these claims. Less than one percent of persons with hepatitis C reported having a tattoo according to the CDC.

The artists at Big Daddy Cadillac’s did warn of sun exposure. Intense sun exposure to tattoos, especially black tattoos, can damage the genetic material beneath the skin. The skin acts as a barrier between the harmful rays of the sun and this genetic material, but if the ink in the skin heats up in sun exposure, it can be harmful. One gentleman showed the green discoloration of his once black tattoo and claimed the sun had damaged not only his tattoo but also the genetic material beneath his skin.

While tattooing involves some risks, the biggest problem comes in the form of regret. Even the FDA reports on the problem of dissatisfaction of tattoos.

Pharo said she knows several girls with tattoos, including some with a “tramp stamp,” referring to the tattoos on the lower backs of women. She said some friends regret their tattoos now, but she still feels very comfortable with her choice.

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Increased attention has come to the search for a cure for cancer as October is breast cancer awareness month. Researchers at the University of Kansas and the University of Kansas Medical Center say they are merely years away from a potentially breakthrough new therapy for cancer.

Researchers at KU have been developing methods to stop the growth of cancer cells in a way that might work universally on all cancers. The research focuses on a single protein, HSP90. Dr. Kyle Hadden, one of the lead researchers at KU, said HSP90 is considered a miracle protein.

“As of right now, it’s the only protein we know of that can effect all other proteins in the caner cell,” Hadden said. “Instead of creating inhibitors for all the different proteins, this one [HSP90] seems to work on everything.”

The goal is to find inhibitors that keep HSP90 from folding other client proteins. When unfolded, these client proteins leave the cancer cell unable to grow, but folded, the client proteins render the cell nearly invincible. Jimmy Bisanti, a KU student working on the HSP90 research, said manipulating this miracle protein has provided several compounds that appear successful in lab experiments. The researchers have found ways to manipulate HSP90 in ways that nearly completely stop the growth of cancer cells, but Hadden says they still have work to do.

“When we find an inhibitor that seems to work, we test it on cell lines in the lab,” Hadden said. “The process is to basically optimize the proteins. We take them as far as our concept for testing goes.”

Hadden admits that they could be as much as 10-years from a viable drug, but says while the process is slow, the researchers are coming across results. When the research at the University is optimized, the inhibitors are sent to Dr. Jeff Holzbeirlein, a Urological Oncologist at the University of Kansas Medical Center.

Chris Avila, a research assistant for Holzbeirlein, says the work should be ready to start animal testing in the next few months. Animal testing is the last stage of testing before the drug can be trialed on humans.

Holzbeirlein’s research focuses on finding the IC50, a concentration of the inhibitors found at KU that can kill one-half the cancer cells without damaging regular cells in the body. Finding a concentration that works affectively on cancer cells and passively on other cells in the body is the last stage before the drug can be sent to animal testing.

“It takes a lot of collaboration and steps to cure anything,” Avila said. “We are in collaboration with the scientist at KU, and when it goes to animal testing, we will be in collaboration with the scientist doing that. Science is a big network.”

While researchers mainly focus on the cancer curing aspects of HSP90, research has yielded some promising results in stopping the progression of Alzheimer’s disease as well.

Hadden says that even with affective results from HSP90, cancer may always come back, but the new advances with the miracle protein have produced real results that may be a valuable tool in fighting cancer in the not too distant future.

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