BBI Member Dr. Fuki Hisama is a professor in the Department of Medical Genetics and medical director of the University of Washington Genetic Medicine Clinic. BBI: Can you tell us about your background and what originally drew you to genetics?
Dr. Hisama: I went to medical school originally wanting to be a neurosurgeon, after I read the book The Making of a Woman Surgeon. I was good with my hands, enjoyed knitting and sewing, and thought I would like it! But I did not like standing for hours on end without being able to eat, or move your arms below your waist or above your shoulders. I remember being very excited watching the surgeons close the incision at the end of a case – a good sign surgery was not for me. However, I also love the brain and the logic of neuroanatomy, so I looked into neurology. I matched in that field and trained at Yale.
Toward the end of my residency training in the early 1990s, genetics were becoming very important to the field of neurology. I knew I wanted to stay in academics, and thought further training in genetics would help me contribute to the field. I first worked in a lab for Sherman Weissman (side note – he trained Francis Collins!) and he started me on a project working with Gerry Schellenberg at the University of Washington to clone the gene for familial Alzheimer’s Disease. I had a second project in which we identified and cloned the gene for Werner syndrome, also known as adult onset progeria. The work on Werner syndrome was successful and became one of my earliest scientific papers. After my time in research, I completed my clinical genetics fellowship at Yale, and officially became a neurogeneticist at a time when that field was very new.
