In the summer of 1966 the Beach Boys and the Beatles topped the
popular music charts, the nowclassic television show Star Trek
first aired, and a young physician-scientist by the name of
George Lipkin filed for an National Cancer Institute grant to
study melanoma. He held the belief that melanoma could actually
be a reversible disease. This was considered quite a radical
idea at that time and Dr. Lipkin had never received his own
grant before. Nevertheless, the grant was awarded and a lifelong
pursuit was underway. This work became the foundation of Biomega
Laboratories, Inc. (“Biomega”), a company devoted to development
of a substance that might just make that original idea a
reality. Not a lot was known at that time about the biological
characteristics that distinguished cancer from normal cells. Dr.
Lipkin began by transfecting hamster melanoma cells (melanoma is
malignancy in thepigment producing cells of the skin) with DNA
or RNA from blue nevi. Blue nevi are heavily pigmented, benign
cells that most peo