Dr. Nancy Davidson, an award-winning breast cancer researcher and medical oncologist as well as Fred Hutch’s Executive Vice President for Clinical Affairs, received funding to pursue a new research project involving PARP inhibitors which will be led by medical oncologist Shaveta Vinayak, MD, and Director of Molecular Imaging Delphine Chen, MD.
Stability of eukaryotic mRNAs is associated with their codon, amino acid, and GC content. Yet, coding sequence motifs that predictably alter mRNA stability in human cells remain poorly defined. Here, we develop a massively parallel assay to measure mRNA effects of thousands of synthetic and endogenous coding sequence motifs in human cells. We identify several families of simple dipeptide repeats…
Six researchers within the Fred Hutch/University of Washington/Seattle Children’s Cancer Consortium have received grants from the Breast Cancer Research Foundation, or BCRF, a longtime funder of the Consortium’s Breast and Ovary Cancer Research Program. The proposed projects will further clarify the benefits of exercise for breast cancer survivors; validate a new imaging tracer to help expand the use of PARP inhibitors; test…
Tumors often get a lot of help in their efforts to survive and grow. Non-cancerous cells around a tumor can help it avoid attacks by the immune system, resist therapies that target them, and allow it to spread to other parts of the body. Researchers are now finding that some of these helpful neighbors aren’t even human cells — they’re…
Drs. Chang Li, research assistant professor, and André Lieber, professor (Medical Genetics) recently met with former NIH Director Dr. Francis Collins, when he visited the University of Washington to discuss their new in vivo approach to treat sickle cell disease (SCD) and beyond. Collins is currently President Biden’s acting scientific advisor. Sickle cell disease is a group of inherited red blood cell disorders…
For about 70 years, prostate cancer researchers have known that the male sex hormone testosterone, an androgen, along with androgen receptor signaling on prostate cancer cells, are linked to survival rates in prostate cancer. As a result, androgen-deprivation therapy, or ADT, which suppresses the production of these sex hormones, has been a cornerstone of prostate cancer treatment for decades.
Seagen is on a roll this week. After naming David Epstein as its new CEO, the Washington-based biotech announced that Adcetris (brentuximab vedotin) has been given FDA approval for the treatment of children aged two years and above with high-risk classical Hodgkin lymphoma. The regulatory nod, based on data from the Phase III study AHOD1331, covers the use of Adcetris with the chemotherapeutic agents doxorubicin,…
The key to learning about cancer evolution in humans may be found by studying a surprising organism: the clam. PNRI scientist Dr. Michael Metzger seeks to understand the principles of how cancer evolves and how some organisms can resist cancer by looking for discovery in an unexpected place through studying transmissible cancers in bivalves: mussels, oysters, cockles, scallops, and clams. What is…
The tumour-associated microbiota is an intrinsic component of the tumour microenvironment across human cancer types1,2. Intratumoral host-microbiota studies have so far largely relied on bulk tissue analysis1-3, which obscures the spatial distribution and localized effect of the microbiota within tumours. Here, by applying in situ spatial-profiling technologies4 and single-cell RNA sequencing5 to oral squamous cell carcinoma and colorectal cancer, we reveal spatial,…
Scientists at the Benaroya Research Institute (BRI) and TrialNet, a global type 1 diabetes (T1D) research consortium, have spent decades working to answer a bold question: Can we stop T1D before it starts? The FDA recently approved a therapy that marks a huge milestone in preventing T1D. This therapy, teplizumab, can delay T1D for a median of two years. “Not only is this…
