When World AIDS Day was first observed 30 years ago, Dr. Larry Corey was already in the thick of it, a scientific leader in the struggle to tame a pandemic that has now taken 35.4 million lives. Today, the former president and director of Seattle’s Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center continues to lead international efforts to stop HIV/AIDS, focused on the search…
SCCA Proton Therapy Center debuted 5 years ago as an unmatched advanced cancer-treatment facility in Seattle. The massive write-down is part of a negotiated Chapter 11 bankruptcy that will provide the SCCA Proton Therapy Center some financial breathing room to seek profitability after a net loss of $81 million over the past two years.
Dr. James Yurkovich joined ISB this summer as a Translational Research Fellow. The three-year Translational Research Fellows Program provides a unique opportunity for bench-to-bedside translational research with mentorship from experts in systems biology and clinical research. Read on for a Q&A with Yurkovich that delves into his research interests, future aspirations, hobbies, and much more. How has your experience as a Translational…
At first, Paul Glusman thought his hernia had re-opened. Doctors who assessed the growing lump in the lawyer’s abdomen had other ideas, none of them dire. Even so, they spent months hunting for a diagnosis. While they hunted, the lump grew. Once Glusman’s doctors decided it must be an infected lymph node, it was surgically removed. This finally led to…
Heart failure is the world’s leading cause of death, most of it related to the loss of muscle after heart attacks. In a study partially funded by Washington Research Foundation and Lynn and Mike Garvey, Chuck Murry, M.D., Ph.D., and his colleagues at UW Medicine injected heart cells grown from human stem cells into monkeys’ hearts. New heart muscle grew…
Three U.S. sites are enrolling couples in the first clinical trial to test the safety and efficacy of a gel for men to prevent unintended pregnancy. (Trial subjects’ criteria and investigators’ contact info at clinicaltrials.gov) Today’s launch was announced jointly by the Population Council, the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), the Los Angeles Biomedical Research Institute and the…
When it comes to the well-being of coral reefs, for many years scientists focused on bleaching, an event that can endanger corals and the diverse marine ecosystems that they support. In bleaching, high temperatures or other stressors cause corals to expel Symbiodinium, the beneficial, brightly colored microbes that would normally share excess energy and nutrients with corals. Bleaching ultimately starves corals and…
Today, Connor Pearcy is an average 7-year-old boy. He loves dinosaurs, Pokemon and tetherball — so much so that the Pearcy family home has a tetherball setup in its backyard. But until about two years ago, Connor also had something most kids don’t: A tumor just below his left knee that resisted chemotherapy and surgery and forced Connor’s family to…
Virginia Mason served as a clinical trial site for a new oral medication awaiting federal approval that some officials say could be a game-changer for children and adolescents who suffer peanut allergy. Results of the clinical trials have been published by The New England Journal of Medicine. The clinical research program at Virginia Mason, in which Virginia Mason Medical Center physicians and Benaroya Research…
With many disease-causing bacteria ratcheting up their shields against current drugs, new tactics are vital to protect people from treatment-resistant infections. Lowering mutation rates in harmful bacteria might be an as yet untried way to hinder the emergence of antimicrobial-resistant pathogens. This proposed strategy comes from recent findings in infectious disease research at UW Medicine in Seattle. The report on…