Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center has announced the 2019 recipients of the annual Harold M. Weintraub Graduate Student Award, which recognizes outstanding achievement in graduate studies in the biological sciences. Nominations for this prestigious award are solicited internationally. This year’s 13 awardees come from academic institutions around the United States, including Johns Hopkins University, Harvard Medical School, Indiana University, Stanford University and…
Long before Hannele Ruohola-Baker became a leading stem cell researcher, she was a young hockey player skating on the frozen ponds of her native Finland. When she was ten years old, she lost a tooth to an errant puck. “I’d say that’s when my interest in regenerating teeth began,” says Dr. Ruohola-Baker, now a Professor of Biochemistry and Associate Director…
My lab is focused on understanding small cell lung cancer (SCLC), an extremely aggressive and highly metastatic cancer type. We study genes mutated in SCLC to try to understand how these genetic changes contribute to SCLC and we seek to identify new therapeutic approaches. We employ genetically engineered mouse models, patient derived xenograft models and functional screens in our research program. One area of particular interest is in the high number of mutations in genes that regulate...
A 2019 Sloan Research Fellowship will help support investigations by early-career scientist Kelley Harris on how modern human genomes evolved and diversified. She joined the UW School of Medicine faculty last year. Harris is studying the recent evolutionary history of humans and other species through the lens of population genetic theory and advances in DNA sequence analysis. Harris opened her UW Medicine lab in 2018…
When Tom Bumol, Ph.D., moved into his new office at the Allen Institute, he gave prominent placement on his desk to a few items from his past. The first: An empty green and white cardboard box for Taltz, an injectable, prescription medication for severe psoriasis. The box doesn’t have Bumol’s name on it — it’s someone else’s prescription — but…
Seattle biotech company Blaze Bioscience has raised $5 million in funding as it pursues a pivotal trial for its “Tumor Paint,” a molecule that binds to cancer cells and lights them up to help brain surgeons remove tumors. The money is the first tranche of a larger round that could reach $20 million. Heather Franklin, co-founder and CEO of Blaze Bioscience. (Blaze…
Bacteria lodged deep in Ella Balasa’s lungs were impervious to most antibiotics. At 26, gasping for breath, she sought out a dramatic experiment — deliberately inhaling a virus culled from sewage to attack her superbug. “I’m really running out of options,” said Balasa, who traveled from her Richmond, Virginia, home to Yale University for the last-resort treatment. “I know it might…
After 25 years of success in infectious disease research and development, IDRI is poised to continue to make rapid and significant advances in the battle against the world’s deadliest infectious diseases, while expanding its mission to use technologies it has pioneered to tackle cancer in an cost-effective way in both the developed and developing world. With that expanded mission comes…
Dr. Aaron Korkegian is a Scientist at the Infectious Disease Research Institute (IDRI) in Seattle working in tuberculosis (TB) drug discovery. Dr. Korkegian sat down with us to discuss the TB pandemic, and what IDRI is doing in collaboration with industry to improve current treatments.
Actor Michael J. Fox has drawn national attention to the tremors and difficulties with balancing and walking that affect him and the one million other Americans with Parkinson disease. But for researchers in Cyrus Zabetian’s lab at the University of Washington’s Pacific Northwest Udall Center (PANUC), the condition goes beyond the motor system. As neurogeneticists, they study the genetic glitches…
