President Biden announced 30 of America’s most distinguished leaders in science and technology as members of his President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST). A direct descendant of the scientific advisory committee established by President Eisenhower in 1957 in the weeks after the launch of Sputnik, PCAST is the sole body of external advisors charged with making science, technology,…
It can be easy to picture the body’s fight against cancer as little more than a comic book brawl. You have the good guys on one side — go, immune cells! — squaring off against villainous cancer on the other. Cancer is maddeningly complex, and its interplay with the immune system involves a huge cast of cells and much chemical…
Heart failure remains a significant cause of morbidity and mortality following myocardial infarction. Cardiac remuscularization with transplantation of human pluripotent stem cell-derived cardiomyocytes is a promising preclinical therapy to restore function. Recent large animal data, however, have revealed a significant risk of engraftment arrhythmia (EA). Although transient, the risk posed by EA presents a barrier to clinical translation. We hypothesized…
Three Seattle scientists who have been studying the coronavirus have been selected among hundreds for national biomedical funding that offers millions of dollars toward their research, positioning them for possible scientific breakthroughs down the road. Trevor Bedford, Frederick Matsen IV and David Veesler are among 33 researchers recognized this year by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI), the largest private biomedical research…
In the neocortex, subcerebral axonal projections originate largely from layer 5 (L5) extratelencephalic-projecting (ET) neurons. The unique morpho-electric properties of these neurons have been mainly described in rodents, where retrograde tracers or transgenic lines can label them. Similar labeling strategies are infeasible in the human neocortex, rendering the translational relevance of findings in rodents unclear. We leveraged the recent discovery…
One of your key points was that the “missense variants of unknown significance (VUS) represent a large and growing problem.” Why is this and how does your answer relate to the “bold prediction” of the seminar, “The clinical relevance of all encountered genomics will be readily predicable, rendering the diagnostic designation VUS obsolete? VUS are a large and growing problem…
