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Objectives. To engage pharmacy students at the McWhorter School of Pharmacy in an authentic discussion of professionalism early in their education. Methods. A booklet was prepared that included several classic short stories and essays that dealt with professionalism. This booklet was sent to all entering students in the class of 2008 and 2009 during the summer prior to their first-professional year of the PharmD program. The stories and essays were discussed in small groups with faculty facilitation during orientation when the students first arrived on campus. A survey instrument was created and administered to assess the impact of this innovative approach to enhancing professionalism. Results. The program was well received and engaged our pharmacy students in a productive discussion on professionalism. Both classes' mean scores on survey items related that the students were engaged in the discussion of professionalism. Survey results pertaining to professional behavior also indicated increased awareness of the importance of professionalism. Conclusion. Enhancing professionalism requires a culture change that necessitates addressing professionalism at its core, a calling to serve, in a persistent and continual manner. Requiring students to read and think about professionalism in a novel way, before they even begin their first-professional year of pharmacy school, appears to be an effective approach to nurturing/encouraging professionalism.

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Advances in the understanding of the immune response to tumors has led to the development of new strategies to design therapeutic vaccines. One of these strategies is the development of protein transfer of immunostimulatory molecules onto the surface of tumor cells, thereby directing the immune response to the tumor antigens carried by the modified tumor cells. This strategy has been developed as an alternative to gene transfer, the more classical technique of introducing immunostimulatory molecules onto tumors. In this report we briefly review current strategies for immunotherapy and then focus on several approaches to protein transfer and their historical basis. Finally, the application of these protein transfer approaches to develop cancer vaccines are reviewed and discussed.