A kidneys-on-a-chip experiment is being readied at Cape Canaveral, Florida, to fly aboard a SpaceX Dragon C19/Falcon 9 supply shuttle to the International Space Station. At an altitude of 250 miles, the chip technology will be used to study reduced gravity and other space flight conditions on kidney physiology. The unmanned SpaceX mission CRS17, contracted with NASA, was slated for Friday,…
The American Association of Immunologists has selected Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center’s Dr. Philip Greenberg, a world expert in cancer immunotherapy, as an AAI 2019 Distinguished Fellow. He is among 52 researchers selected for the inaugural class of fellows. Immunotherapy, an offshoot of Fred Hutch’s pioneering work in bone marrow transplantation, harnesses the body’s immune system to eliminate cancer cells. Greenberg, head of…
Research is becoming increasingly embroiled in ongoing political tensions between the United States and China. In the latest twist, the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston has moved to terminate the employment of three scientists after the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) said that they had committed serious violations of agency rules regarding the confidentiality of…
Growing up in Ghana, a sub-Saharan country on the west coast of Africa, Dr. Nana Minkah, a scientist at the Kappe Lab, endured the unenviable “rite of passage” contracting malaria multiple times as a child. While he doesn’t remember the early years when the associated high fever caused hallucinations, he has distinct memories of later bouts when he was bedridden for…
Protein can have modular function that is encoded in multiple distinct domains or interaction interfaces. The finding that many small fragments of native proteins can inhibit their full-length counterparts suggests that this modularity introduces a vulnerability. By screening in high-throughput for polypeptide fragments that inhibit protein function, we exploit this vulnerability, which might lead to identifying optimal inhibitors for many target proteins. Thus, this method should be useful in the development of small polypeptide therapeutics...
We commonly associate inner-ear structures with hearing, but deep in the ear canal sit tiny organs called crista ampullaris – crista, for short. Aided by millions of sensory hair cells, crista help us maintain our gaze as we move around, like a modern camera’s stabilizer function. Without a healthy population of these hair-like cells, the brain struggles to track our…
Dr. Billanna Hwang (Billie) is a Research Scientist heading toward the faculty track under the mentorship of Dr. Michael S. Mulligan in the Department of Surgery at the University of Washington. Her research focuses on the role of exosomes in immune modulation, and as biomarkers and a potential immunotherapeutic for a variety of inflammatory processes, including lung ischemia reperfusion injury. We sat down with Dr. Hwang to discuss how she stumbled into the world of exosome research...
Congratulations to Sharlene Santana and Verónica di Stilio on winning Fulbright Scholarships! The Fulbright Program, which aims to increase mutual understanding between the people of the United States and the people of other countries, is the flagship international educational exchange program sponsored by the U.S. government. Fulbright alumni have become heads of state, judges, ambassadors, cabinet ministers, CEOs, and university presidents,…
The Institute for Protein Design at the University of Washington School of Medicine in Seattle has received a commitment of an initial $45 million in funding through The Audacious Project, a philanthropic collaborative that surfaces and funds critical projects with the potential to create massive global change. “This is simply wonderful, and it comes at the best possible time,” said David Baker.…
Drs. Nancy E. Davidson and Denise Galloway, two of the nation’s leading lights in women’s health research and scientists at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, have been elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, joining a class of luminaries this year that includes former First Lady Michelle Obama. One of the nation’s oldest learned societies, the Academy was…
