Japan’s Otsuka Pharmaceuticals on Thursday announced a multi-target collaboration with RNA editing biotech Shape Therapeutics to develop intravitreal adeno-associated virus gene therapies for ocular diseases. While the companies did not provide full details of the financial terms, they revealed that the contract has a potential aggregate value exceeding $1.5 billion, which includes an upfront payment from Otsuka. This sum also…
Patient partners work alongside staff members as equals at the Center for Accelerating Care Transformation (ACT Center), which is part of Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute (KPWHRI). They share their perspectives and experiences to design and tailor better solutions to improve health care. But at research conferences and meetings — where staff members have ample opportunities to share knowledge with other…
Today, leaders from Odessa Brown Children’s Clinic (OBCC) announced the location of its new clinic site in Seattle’s Central District. The future home of OBCC, situated on the corner of 18th Ave. S. and S. Jackson St., will serve area patients and families with robust mental health and behavioral health services, nutrition, acute and well-child medical visits, labs, violence and…
Many women around the world face the risk of unintended pregnancy and HIV infection – two of the leading causes of death for women of reproductive age. However, only 21% of reproductively active women have access to modern contraceptives and many do not regularly use or have access to HIV prevention methods, called pre-exposure prophylaxis or PrEP, in areas where…
Dr. Nisha Bansal, professor (Nephrology) was awarded a National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK) Investigator Award to Support Mentoring of Early Career Researchers from Diverse Backgrounds (K26). The purpose of this award is to provide protected effort and resources to established NIDDK-funded mentors to provide high-quality mentoring to graduate students and postdoctoral fellows from diverse backgrounds,…
Patescibacteria, also known as the candidate phyla radiation (CPR), are a diverse group of bacteria that constitute a disproportionately large fraction of microbial dark matter. Its few cultivated members, belonging mostly to Saccharibacteria, grow as epibionts on host Actinobacteria. Due to a lack of suitable tools, the genetic basis of this lifestyle and other unique features of Patescibacteira remain unexplored.…
Today, the Benaroya Research Institute (BRI) announced new research grants awarded in Q1 and Q2 of 2023, including a $3.1 million grant to study inflammatory memory and how to break the cycle of inflammation in patients with skin diseases like psoriasis and atopic dermatitis, funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). All grants awarded to BRI in Q1 and…
Dr. Kelly Stevens is an associate professor in the departments of Bioengineering and Laboratory Medicine & Pathology at the University of Washington. Dr. Stevens is a part of a team of biomedical researchers that has developed a new method for hiring engineering professors. To help diversify faculty hiring, the team published a hiring roadmap August 14 in Nature Biomedical Engineering.…
Dr. Suzanne Watnick, professor (Nephrology) is the recipient of the 2024 Shaul G. Massry Distinguished Lecture Award from the National Kidney Foundation. This lectureship was established in 1996 to honor Dr. Shaul G. Massry for his scientific achievements and his contribution to the kidney healthcare community and to the National Kidney Foundation. Dr. Watnick is a practicing nephrologist at the…
Constitutional mismatch repair deficiency (CMMRD) is a cancer predisposition syndrome associated with the development of hypermutant pediatric high-grade glioma, and confers a poor prognosis. While therapeutic histone deacetylase (HDAC) inhibition of diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma (DIPG) has been reported; here, we use a clinically relevant biopsy-derived hypermutant DIPG model (PBT-24FH) and a CRISPR-Cas9 induced genetic model to evaluate the efficacy…
