Impaired glucose metabolism in diabetes causes severe acute and long‐term complications, making real‐time detection of blood glucose indispensable for diabetic patients. Existing continuous glucose monitoring systems are unsuitable for long‐term clinical glycemic management due to poor long‐term stability. Polymer dot (Pdot) glucose transducers are implantable optical nanosensors that exhibit excellent brightness, sensitivity, selectivity, and biocompatibility. Here, it is shown that…
Head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) associated with high-risk human papilloma virus (HPV) infection is a growing clinical problem. The WEE1 kinase inhibitor AZD1775 (WEE1i) overrides cell cycle checkpoints and is being studied in HNSCC regimens. We show that the HPV16 E6/E7 oncoproteins sensitize HNSCC cells to single-agent WEE1i treatment through activation of a FOXM1-CDK1 circuit that drives mitotic…
Like the draft “shotgun” Human Genome Project of the Human Genome Organization (HUGO), the HPP has now reached a significant decadal milestone of more than 90 percent completion of the Human Proteome that is referred to as the human proteome “parts list.” This effort recognizes significant community efforts that enabled data inspection and re-analysis, culminating in a high stringency (i.e.,…
Since emerging in China in late 2019, COVID-19 has claimed more than one million lives and infected more than 30 million people around the world. Initially viewed as a respiratory infection, scientists soon realized the virus was also capable of causing serious heart damage, including arrhythmias, heart attacks, and heart failure. While COVID-19 clearly contributes to significant cardiovascular problems in…
Over the past seven million years, mostly in the past two million, the human brain has tripled in size and increased in cellular complexity. This phenomenon supported our species’ growing capacity for language, problem-solving, walking upright and many other abilities critical to navigating demanding environments. But it hasn’t come for free. For modern humans, there’s a price to pay for…
New research is underway to better understand the nucleus, the control center of our cells. Teams from two divisions of the Allen Institute, the Allen Institute for Cell Science and the Allen Institute for Brain Science, are participating in newly launched projects to address unanswered questions in nuclear biology. Both projects are part of 4DN Centers for Data Integration, Modeling…
Everyone has a baby story that they’ll never live down. Emily Voigt PhD’14’s kid will forever be known as the baby who almost prevented her mom from developing vaccine technology during the coronavirus pandemic of 2020. “I was working furiously to try to get that grant application submitted before I went into labor,” Voigt says. “My wonderful grants manager told…
With the approach of colder weather and people spending more time indoors, medical experts are concerned that COVID-19 might hide among other respiratory viruses that spread during cold and flu season, making it harder to separate discomforting illnesses from potentially lethal ones. Researchers at the University of Washington and Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center are working together to explore the…
After more than two years of reconstruction efforts, scientists from the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center have moved into their new labs at the newly renovated Lake Union Steam Plant. The 106,000-square-foot historical building provides a collaborative space for nearly 300 scientists and staff focused on immunotherapy, translational data science and related programs. It represents the next generation of lifesaving therapies stemming…
