A new generation of potent prostate cancer drugs has dramatically extended survival for patients with advanced prostate cancer. But prostate tumors are finding new ways of resisting these treatments, creating a need for new treatment options. In a new study published today, researchers at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center discovered that when aggressive prostate tumors turn off the receptor, their…
The immune system of the cervicovaginal tract (CVT) must balance immunosurveillance and active immunity against pathogens with maintenance of tolerance to resident microbiota and to fetal and partner antigens for reproductive purposes. Thus, we predicted that CVT immunity is characterized by distinctive features compared to blood and other tissue compartments. Indeed, we found that CVT CD8+ T-cells had unique transcriptional…
Summary The Howard Hughes Medical Institute has awarded grants to 44 doctoral adviser-student pairs to improve faculty mentoring skills, support new scientific leaders, and foster diversity and inclusion in science. A good scientific mentor can help students navigate different career paths and plug them into new networks. A mentor can be a sounding board and an advocate – and they…
Franklin Faust, BS in Neurobiology, a research team member of UW Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center, reports back with summaries of the neuroscience talks presented in Day 1 of Exploring Frontiers: Predicting Biology hosted by the Allen Institute for Brain Science. The July 25th afternoon sessions featured brain researchers from around the world. They discussed the use of modeling to better understand the brain. The Allen Institute for Brain Science…
Caroline Cannistra joined ISB in 2018 as a Systems Research Scholar. In this Q&A, Cannistra describes her experiences at ISB, research interests, future aspirations, and much more. ISB: How has your experience as a Systems Research Scholar at ISB been so far? What have you learned through your collaborations with Drs. Jim Heath and Ilya Shmulevich, and members of the Heath and…
Like all good internships, Lauren Hacker’s summer stint in the lab of Dr. Soheil Meshinchi has been hands-on. She’s been busy pipetting DNA samples into tiny vials, working with exotic-sounding instruments like thermocycles and cranking out copies of genetic material. The high school senior from Omaha, Nebraska, seems at home amidst the white coats and glass beakers. But while the Meshinchi Lab…
Advances in cancer immunotherapies make it critical to identify genes that modulate antigen presentation and tumor-immune interactions. The authors report that DUX4, an early embryonic transcription factor that is normally silenced in somatic tissues, is re-expressed in diverse solid cancers. Both cis-acting inherited genetic variation and somatically acquired mutations in trans-acting repressors contribute to DUX4 re-expression in cancer.
The deadly nature of most pancreatic tumors is well known. Less than 10% of patients with pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma, or PDA, will survive five years past diagnosis. Recent molecular analyses of PDA has shown that a patient’s prognosis changes depending on their tumor’s molecular characteristics. One subtype of PDA, dubbed quasi-mesenchymal PDA, or QM-PDA, has the worst prognosis of all. A new…
What happens when we give up? Inside the brain, a group of cells known as nociceptin neurons get very active before a mouse’s breakpoint. They emit nociceptin, a complex molecule that suppresses dopamine, a chemical largely associated with motivation. The findings, reported July 25 in Cell, offer new insight into the complex world of motivation and reward. The nociceptin neurons are located…
Summer school is in session for researchers at Seattle Children’s Research Institute, and although there are text books and a final exam, very little else about the biology course taught by Dr. Philip Morgan and his fellow scientist and wife, Dr. Margaret Sedensky, is business as usual. That’s because their students are Tibetan monks and their classroom is at a monastic university in…
