Dr. Tina Lockwood, Ph.D., is the definition of accomplished in her field, which puts her at the leading edge of research focused on precision medicine and the genetics of human disease. Lockwood is an associate professor at the University of Washington, where she serves as the director of the Genetics and Solid Tumor Diagnostics Laboratory in the Department of Laboratory…
For more than a century, the human fingerprint has been a symbol of individual identity, a plot device for mystery writers and moviemakers, and a tool for criminal investigators hoping to prove that only one person out of several billion could be the culprit. Dr. Pamela Becker is at the center of a collaborative effort to extend the lives of…
A team of chemical engineers has developed a new way to produce medicines and chemicals on demand and preserve them using portable “biofactories” embedded in water-based gels called hydrogels. The approach could help people in remote villages or on military missions, where the absence of pharmacies, doctor’s offices or even basic refrigeration makes it hard to access critical medicines, daily…
The authors used single cell transcriptomic techniques to compare retinal organoids to normal fetal development. At least for the first few months of development, the stem cell-derived organoids were pretty close to the normal retina, but as time went on, they diverged in several ways. They made a new type of organ culture, called retinospheres that much more like the normal fetal cells, even after long periods of time in culture dishes.
When it comes to developing a protein cage-based therapeutic vaccine, Rose Fields, a senior majoring in biochemistry, works in uncharted and high-impact territory. Fields became involved in this particular project through her previous work at the Institute for Protein Design where she started her research career during her freshman year. Fields described her research as being at the intersection of…
Stimulator of interferon genes (STING) plays a central role in sensing intracellular DNA in mammalian cells. By studying the ability of adenoviral oncoprotein E1A to repress DNA sensing in human cells, Burleigh et al. have found a STING-independent intracellular DNA sensing pathway that relies on DNA-dependent protein kinase (DNA-PK). They report that DNA-PK–dependent DNA sensing pathway is not activated by cyclic guanosine…
The V Foundation for Cancer Research has awarded Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center computational biologist Dr. Gavin Ha a 2020 V Scholar Grant to study whether a noninvasive procedure known as a liquid biopsy can help monitor and predict how patients with prostate cancer will respond to therapy. V Scholar Grants are designed to help early-career investigators like Ha pursue high-risk, high-reward ideas. Ha…
Next week, in the first major contest of the 2020 U.S. presidential campaign, Democratic Party voters in Iowa will pick the candidate they want to face off against President Donald Trump. One of the top contenders, Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, has come out with a proposal to keep so-called junk science, supported by industry, out of federal policy decisions. Many…
Meet Lea Starita, a Seattle-based genome scientist who is working to understand how our individual genes impact our health. Here, she answers some questions about her work. Dr. Lea Starita is a research assistant professor of genome sciences at the University of Washington, as well as co-director of the advanced technology lab at the Brotman Baty Institute for Precision Medicine.…
Under the agreement, the Coriell Institute for Medical Research will continue to store, distribute Allen Cell Collection The Allen Institute has extended its contract with the Coriell Institute for Medical Research for the storage and distribution of its Allen Cell Collection, a cutting-edge collection of gene-edited human induced pluripotent stem cell lines. This collection was launched in 2016 with five cell…
