Degenerative diseases come in many forms. When they strike, the root cause is essentially the same: unchecked cell depletion that impairs the functioning of tissues and organs. In type 1 diabetes, for example, the body’s immune system attacks beta cells, a special type of cell in the pancreas that produces insulin, the hormone we rely on to regulate blood-sugar levels. Today,…
The American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) has recognized the founding members and the current project team of The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) project with the 2020 AACR Team Science Awards. The recognition was announced at the AACR Virtual Meeting on June 24. Award recipients include Dr. Ilya Shmulevich, ISB professor and head of the Shmulevich Lab; ISB senior research scientist Dr. Vésteinn Þórsson; and…
Powdered sugar is the special ingredient in a Rice University recipe for mimicking the body’s intricate, branching blood vessels in lab-grown tissues. In research published today in the journal Nature Biomedical Engineering, bioengineers showed they could keep densely packed cells alive for two weeks in relatively large constructs by creating complex blood vessel networks from templates of 3D-printed sugar. The Rice researchers were…
The UW/Fred Hutch Center for AIDS Research is delighted to announce the recipient of its 2020 Mentored International Investigator Award. The Mentored International Investigator Awards are to encourage international junior investigators (at an advanced stage of training or recently independent) to conduct independent research with close mentorship from senior faculty. This research should ultimately lead to acquiring preliminary data to obtain…
Since the unwelcome arrival of COVID-19, a class of tiny, Y-shaped proteins in our blood called antibodies has emerged as a focus of attention for researchers hoping to find a way to treat it, a vaccine to prevent it and tests to confirm whether a person has gotten over it. One of the workhorses of the human immune system, antibodies…
Three research institutions in Seattle have joined forces to study how Alzheimer’s disease takes root in the brain. The consortium will create a new research center at the Allen Institute for Brain Science to study tissue from brains donated by people who died with Alzheimer’s. UW Medicine and the Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Group are also part of the effort, which will be funded…
SS-31 is a synthetic peptide that improves mitochondrial function and is currently undergoing clinical trials for treatments of heart failure, primary mitochondrial myopathy, and other mitochondrial diseases. SS-31 interacts with cardiolipin which is abundant in the inner mitochondrial membrane, but mechanistic details of its pharmacological effects are unknown. Here we apply a chemical cross-linking/mass spectrometry method to provide direct evidence…
Seattle Genetics, Inc. have announced dosing of the first patient in a phase I clinical trial evaluating investigational agent SEA-TGT, also known as SGN-TGT, an anti-TIGIT antibody for patients with solid tumors and lymphomas. TIGIT (T-cell immune receptor with Ig and ITIM domains) is an inhibitory immune receptor that is emerging as a clinically relevant immuno-oncology target. SEA-TGT is a…
Growing evidence indicates a role for the gut microbiota in modulating anti-tumor treatment efficacy in human cancer. Here we study mucosa-associated invariant T (MAIT) cells to look for evidence of bacterial antigen recognition in human colon, lung, and kidney carcinomas. Using mass cytometry and single-cell mRNA sequencing, we identify a tumor-infiltrating MAIT cell subset expressing CD4 and Foxp3 and observe…
We usually think of bacteria as the enemy. Historically we’ve focused on the bad actors that infect and even kill us. However, bacteria have enemies of their own, which they must constantly ward off to survive. Dr. Kevin Forsberg, a postdoctoral fellow in Dr. Harmit Malik’s lab at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, considers bacteria’s struggle every day. His obsession with…
