One Hanahan resident is doing all he can to save his Palmetto tree after receiving a notice from Dominion Energy that it’s been scheduled to be cut down.

HANAHAN, S.C. (WCSC) - One Hanahan resident is doing all he can to save his Palmetto tree after receiving a notice from Dominion Energy that it’s been scheduled to be cut down.

Jay Mullis says after returning home recently he found his tree marked with an “X” and a note in his driveway from Dominion stating the condition of his tree warrants action by the company.

The Mullis family has lived in this home since December of 2019, and they say the palmetto is the most important piece of their front lawn.

Mullis contacted a Dominion representative and shared his concern about the sudden notice that the tree was a threat and was looking to find a mutually beneficial compromise.

Dominion Energy said the tree has made contact with their energized distribution conductors and has been identified as hazardous.

After being told there wasn’t anything the company could do to save the tree, Mullis took it into his own hands. He has since trimmed it in hopes that it will no longer pose a threat momentarily and can give him time to move the tree on his own dime.

Dominion Energy spokesman Paul Fischer warned that customers should never hire a private contractor to work near power lines or attempt to do the work themselves.

“Untrained individuals should not attempt to trim trees near overhead lines for risk of serious or fatal injury,” he said. “Only qualified utility line clearance professionals or contractors who meet OSHA qualifications are legally permitted to work within 10 feet of power lines, or work on a tree that has branches within 10 feet of power lines.”

“I think it’s important that we start working together on these issues, it’s a piece of me that we cut and the tree I think will be fine and hope that they just let me move it back 10 feet,” Mullis says.

To purchase a new tree would cost thousands and Mullis says it would take years to grow to the size of his current one. He says all he’s looking for is a chance to work with Dominion to save his tree.

Dominion says customers with concerns regarding trees on or near their property should call (800) 251-7234.

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Fleming Island (FL): Chad Parker has accepted the head coaching job.

Loyola Academy (Wilmette, IL): Loyola Academy is looking to hire a new head coach. The Head Football Coach is responsible for staffing at all aspects of the Football Program (Freshman A/B, Sophomore and Varsity), scheduling opponents (in conjunction with the Athletic Director), strength & conditioning (off season & in season program), and coaching team members. Interested parties can apply via this link.

Western (Las Vegas, NV): Western HS is completing its new staff and has openings for coaches at multiple positions. Coordinator positions will be considered for qualified candidates. There are several teaching and non faculty positions on campus. Candidates with college experience or HS coordinator experience will be given preference. Candidates seeking teaching positions must have or be able to obtain a Nevada Teachers License. Interested applicants should contact Athletic Director John Norton at nortoj@nv.ccsd.net.

Masters of Sports Administration: Looking for an exceptional, convenient education to advance or kick off your career in sports? UIU’s Master of Sport Administration is delivered entirely online. As a graduate, you will understand the organizational, financial, personnel and technology issues involved in sport and sport business and have a greater understanding of the needs within athletic departments in high school, college, and professional sports.

Loyola Academy (Wilmette, IL): After 17 years, and three state titles head coach John Holecek is retiring from coaching high school football.

Glazier Clinics: You don’t want to miss out on these cutting-edge football talks. Gain an edge next year over your opponent → https://www.glazierclinics.com/coaching-clinics-2023

Wellington Community (FL): Wellington Community HS is seeking applicants for the position of Varsity Head Football Coach. The selected candidate will oversee, and be responsible, for the all operations related to the football program. This will include all three teams - Freshmen, JV and Varsity. If you are interested in applying, please forward your résumé, letter of interest, and the contact information for at least three references to Athletic Director, Robert Callovi, via email at robert.callovi@palmbeachschools.org.

Hanahan (SC): Hanahan HS has an opening for a Head Football Coach/teaching position (position TBD). We are a 3A school, located just outside of Charleston, SC in the Berkeley County School District. All interested applicants should apply at www.bcsdschools.net and email a letter of interest and resume to our Athletic Director Kim Joseph at josephk@bcsdschools.net. The position will close on December 29.

After being reelected for another term on Tuesday, Hanahan Mayor Christie Rainwater is already preparing for the next four years.

HANAHAN, S.C. (WCSC) - After being reelected for another term on Tuesday, Hanahan Mayor Christie Rainwater is already preparing for the next four years.

In this year’s election, no opponents ran against Rainwater, which she says was a relief to not sit on the edge of her seat and worry about winning or not.

“I feel like the residents of the city have seen the work I’ve put in, and they want that to keep going,” she says. “They want the momentum to continue, and no one ran against me. I’m able to really continue keeping that momentum going.”

The Hanahan City Council and school board members were all reelected on Tuesday, and the mayor says will continue as a strong partnership because of the established relationships.

Similar to the rest of the Lowcountry, Hanahan continues to grow. Rainwater focused on building economic development and recreation in the area by adding two new parks over the last four years.

“Really bringing this quality of life to the residents is what we’ve been doing over the past four years and will continue to do over the next four,” she says.

As for the upcoming four years, the mayor really wants to focus on flooding concerns, more economic growth and additional housing for the community. She also mentioned that the Lowcountry Rapid Transit plans include four stops that will positively impact Hanahan.

“We are really looking at our specifically downtown area and how can we allow for housing that will work for everyone,” Rainwater says. “We have changed the ordinances over the past few years that will allow for us to build up a little higher and bring that in.”

The mayor also expressed that Hanahan has a small-town feel despite being the seventeenth-largest city in South Carolina.

“I like to say I bleed blue and orange,” she says. “Hanahan is the heart of the Lowcountry. When you look at its location, you’ve got downtown Charleston, Summerville, Mount Pleasant, West Ashley, and right in the heart, you’ll find Hanahan. The truth is, it’s not just because of its location; the people in Hanahan are so special.”

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FMRP and tumor immunity

Many tumors have developed mechanisms rendering them resistant to attack and destruction by the immune system. Zeng et al. report that fragile X mental retardation protein (FMRP) is highly expressed in human cancers, and they propose that it is involved in antitumor immunity. FMRP is best known as an RNA-binding protein that regulates the stability and translation of neuronal RNAs. By genetically inactivating the FMRP gene in mouse cancer cells, the researchers found that FMRP-deficient tumors had reduced growth and were more susceptible to attack by T lymphocytes. Tumor cells lacking FMRP showed remodeling of the tumor microenvironment, macrophage polarization, and upregulation of the chemokines involved in effector CD8⁺ T cell recruitment. —PNK

Structured Abstract

Cancer biology and therapy have been transformed by knowledge about immunoregulatory mechanisms that govern adaptive immunity. Although some forms of treatment resistance are related to the intentionally transitory operations of the adaptive immune system, others reflect more subtle requirements to modulate the immune system in different contexts. In this work, we identified an immunoregulatory mechanism involving the neuronal RNA binding protein fragile X mental retardation protein (FMRP), which broadly regulates protein translation and mRNA stability and is aberrantly up-regulated in multiple forms of cancer.

This study was motivated by reports that cancer cells naturally overexpressing FMRP, whose loss of expression in developing neurons causes cognitive defects, were invasive and metastatic. We investigated the expression of FMRP in human tumors, further assessed its tumor-promoting functions in mouse models of cancer, and evaluated its association with prognosis for human cancer patients.

When human tumor tissue microarrays were immunostained for expression of FMRP, a majority of tumors expressed FMRP, whereas cognate normal tissues did not. To investigate the functional significance of this broad up-regulation, the FMR1 gene was ablated through CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing (FMRP-KO, where KO indicates knockout) in mouse cancer cell lines that were inoculated into both immunodeficient and syngeneic immunocompetent mice to establish tumors in parallel with wild-type (WT) FMRP-expressing cell lines. Mice bearing FMRP-KO tumors had similar survival compared with isogenic WT tumors in immunodeficient hosts, indicating that FMRP was not involved in stimulating tumor growth per se. By contrast, tumor growth was impaired and survival extended in immunocompetent hosts, implicating the adaptive immune system. Indeed, FMRP-expressing WT tumors were largely devoid of T cells, whereas FMRP-KO tumors were highly inflamed. Depletion of CD8 and CD4 T cells restored tumor growth and reduced survival, implicating FMRP in immune evasion in WT tumors. WT and FMRP-KO tumors were profiled by single-cell RNA sequencing, revealing marked differences in genome-wide transcription and abundance of cancer cells, macrophages, and T cells. To elucidate the effects of this multifaceted regulatory protein, we performed several functional perturbations, revealing that: FMRP-expressing cancer cells produce the chemokine interleukin-33 (IL-33), which induces regulatory T cells, as well as tumor-secreted protein S (PROS1) ligand and exosomes that elicit tumor-promoting (M2) macrophages. Both cell types are immunosuppressive, collectively contributing to the barrier against T cell attack. By contrast, FMRP-KO cancer cells down-regulate all three factors and up-regulate C-C motif chemokine ligand 7 (CCL7), which helps recruit and activate T cells. Additionally, immunostimulatory macrophages develop in this context that express three proinflammatory chemokines—CCL5, CXCL9, and CXCL10—which cooperate with CCL7 in recruiting T cells. Finally, neither FMR1 mRNA nor FMRP protein levels were sufficient to predict outcomes in cohorts of cancer patients. Recognizing FMRP’s function as an RNA binding protein that modulates mRNA stability and hence levels in transcriptome datasets, a gene signature reflecting FMRP’s cancer regulatory activity (involving 156 genes) was developed by comparing FMRP-expressing versus FMRP-deficient cancer cells, both in culture and within tumors. Our FMRP cancer activity signature was prognostic for survival across multiple human cancers; anticorrelated with the intensity of T cell infiltration in different tumor types, consistent with FMRP’s immunosuppressive effects; and was associated with comparatively poor responses to immune checkpoint inhibitors and immune-dependent chemotherapy in selected cohorts.

FMRP is revealed as a regulator of a network of genes and cells in the tumor microenvironment that contribute to the capability of tumors to evade immune destruction.

Abstract

Many human cancers manifest the capability to circumvent attack by the adaptive immune system. In this work, we identified a component of immune evasion that involves frequent up-regulation of fragile X mental retardation protein (FMRP) in solid tumors. FMRP represses immune attack, as revealed by cancer cells engineered to lack its expression. FMRP-deficient tumors were infiltrated by activated T cells that impaired tumor growth and enhanced survival in mice. Mechanistically, FMRP’s immunosuppression was multifactorial, involving repression of the chemoattractant C-C motif chemokine ligand 7 (CCL7) concomitant with up-regulation of three immunomodulators—interleukin-33 (IL-33), tumor-secreted protein S (PROS1), and extracellular vesicles. Gene signatures associate FMRP’s cancer network with poor prognosis and response to therapy in cancer patients. Collectively, FMRP is implicated as a regulator that orchestrates a multifaceted barrier to antitumor immune responses.

More than 30 high school baseball teams from multiple states will compete for titles in the 52nd annual Hanahan Invitational Tournament set for April 11-14.

The tournament has two divisions named for former Hanahan High Hawks baseball coaches, Tom Hatfield and Bill Steadman. Hatfield started the HIT in 1970 as a way to get a few local teams together for games during spring break. Steadman followed Hatfield at HHS and the tournament eventually swelled into a premier spring break stop as more teams from outside South Carolina accepted invitations to visit the Lowcountry.

States represented in the 2022 HIT are South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, Ohio and New York. Another squad will make its way into town from Washington, D.C.

“We do have some strong teams coming in,” Hanahan coach Brian Mitchell said. “We know locally we have some great teams but we have our hands full trying to win it. The team from D.C. is the team to beat. Their head coach is something like 316-80. They’re loaded. There is some quality baseball coming to town. We’re going to have to hunker down and play well.”

Eight of the local clubs are ranked inside the top 10 of their respective classifications by the South Carolina Baseball Coaches Association.

Last spring, Summerville High School rallied from a five-run deficit to edge Blessed Trinity from Roswell, Ga., with a run in the bottom of the seventh. It was the difference in the Green Wave’s 8-7 victory in the championship game. The 2021 field was smaller due to COVID concerns.

Summerville went on to capture the Class AAAAA Lower State title in 2021.

“It’s a good gauge to see how you’re playing going into the end of the season,” Mitchell said. “If you do well in the HIT, you’re going to go on and do well in the playoffs.”

Host sites for the first two days of the tournament are Hanahan, Goose Creek, James Island, Ashley Ridge, Summerville, West Ashley, Bishop England and Wando. Semifinal sites will be determined later. Hanahan will host the championship games on April 14.

There is also a junior varsity division, which was won by the host school last spring. Fifteen of the 17 squads set to compete are from the Charleston area.

52nd annual HIT schedule

(Monday, April 11)

Steadman Division

At Hanahan

2 p.m. – Timberland vs. May River

5 p.m. – Game 1 winner vs. Ocean Lakes, Va.

7:30 p.m. – Hanahan vs. Olympic, N.C.

At James Island Charter

5 p.m. – Lucy Beckham vs. Reagan, N.C.

7:30 p.m. – Stratford vs. James Island

At Goose Creek

2 p.m. – Beaufort vs. Cane Bay

5 p.m. – Game 1 winner vs. Oceanside

7:30 p.m. – Goose Creek vs. St. John’s (D.C.)

At Ashley Ridge

2 p.m. – Bamberg vs. Woodland

5 p.m. – Game 1 winner vs. Ardrey Kell, N.C.

7:30 p.m. – Ashley Ridge vs. Ben Lippen

Hatfield Division

At Summerville

5 p.m. – Pinewood Prep vs. Hickory, Va.

7:30 p.m. – Hickory Grove, N.C. vs. Summerville

At West Ashley

5 p.m. – Hilton Head vs. Randleman, N.C.

7:30 p.m. – Catawba Ridge vs. West Ashley

At Bishop England

5 p.m. – Fort Dorchester vs. Providence, N.C.

7:30 p.m. – St. Edwards, Ohio vs. Bishop England

At Wando

5 p.m. – Philip Simmons vs. Mamaroneck, N.Y.

7:30 p.m. – Nansemond River, Va. vs. Wando