The Hood Lab, led by Dr. Lee Hood, is integrating biology, technology and computational science to enable a predictive, personalized, preventive and participatory (P4) approach to medicine.
Image of a metabolic pathway from lead author Dr. Noa Rappaport’s Longevity Consortium paper published in Communications Biology. Original figure credit: Dr. Priyanka Baloni.
By 2034, U.S. adults 65 and over are expected to outnumber children, making it critically important to better understand the molecular factors underpinning longevity, healthy aging, and age-related disease. The NIH’s Longevity Consortium – in which the Hood Lab’s Noa Rappaport co-leads three projects – aims to improve our understanding of these factors and identify possible pathways for drugs or other treatments.
Image credit: NIH All of Us from their sharable resources archive.
The NIH is leading an effort – All of Us – to correct long-standing disparities in biomedical research resulting in treatments best serving white males. With NIH support, ISB’s Hood and Hadlock labs are analyzing All of Us data from 800,000 enrollees – 80 percent from underrepresented populations – on the effect of genetic variants, which may vary based on sex, race, and ethnicity, on disease risk.
Dr. Leroy Hood in his office with Dr. Cory Funk. Photo credit: Scott Eklund / Red Box Pictures.
Billions of dollars have been spent on drugs that target amyloid plaque – long believed to be the cause of Alzheimer’s – with virtually no success. Research by the Hood Lab’s Cory Funk suggests an alternative that may lead to personalized treatments: that Alzheimer’s is the result of the aging brain’s inability to offload cholesterol, which accelerates the death of the brain’s nerve cells.
3D illustration of neurons, Getty Images/Unsplash+.
In the U.S., HSV-1 (herpes simplex virus) is among the most common viral infections. It is latent – never disappearing from the body – not treatable, and many people do not know they have it. To inform potential treatments, the Hood Lab’s Cory Funk, with the UW, is exploring whether HSV-1 is a factor in the development and progression of Alzheimer’s.
Researcher working at a computer in the mass spec lab at ISB. Photo credit: Steve Utaski / Remedy Pictures.
Accessing the vast multitude of biomedical and scientific data is a bottleneck, slowing the translation of research into care. The Hood Lab’s Gwênlyn Glusman, with the Hadlock and Thorsson-Shmulevich labs, is fixing this “first-mile” problem by integrating data troves into the Biomedical Data Translator. The Translator enables researchers to access and query this knowledge, extracting information urgently needed to improve clinical care.
Mother and baby. Photo credit: Unsplash.
In the U.S., preterm birth (10 percent of births), preeclampsia (affecting 1 in 25 pregnancies), and low birth weight (9 percent of births) are often concurrent obstetric disorders affecting maternal, infant, and lifetime health. The Hood Lab’s Sam Piekos, with an NIH Pathway to Independence grant, is researching the molecular basis of obstetric disorders to improve maternal-fetal clinical care and lifetime health.
A cake with many candles. Photo credit: Caterina Berger, Unsplash, recolored by ISB.
Centenarians – one in 5,000 U.S. people who live to 100 or over – have a lower incidence of age-related diseases, in part from protective molecular factors. To discover therapeutic targets and interventions to promote healthy aging for everyone, the Hood Lab’s Noa Rappaport, with Sage Bionetworks and other researchers supported by the NIH’s National Institute on Aging, are working to understand these factors.
Dr. Noa Rappaport working with Dr. Tomasz Wilmanski at ISB. Photo credit: Scott Eklund / Red Box Pictures.
Little was known about male osteoporosis (bone weakening) and fractures, so in 2000 the NIH enrolled 6,000 men over 65 in a study – which remains active today – finding that men like women experience significant bone loss with aging, leading to increased risk of fractures and consequent health issues. The Hood Lab’s Noa Rappaport is working with study collaborators to understand the predictive molecular basis for this finding.
Electron micrograph of influenza virus. Image credit: Wikimedia Commons, recolored by ISB.
Secondary bacterial infections are a major cause of severe illness and death from influenza. People over 65, children under 5, and people with certain chronic conditions are especially at risk of serious illness. Kathie Walters of the Hood Lab works with researchers from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease to identify targets for potential new therapies for severe influenza-bacteria co-infections.
Syringe with needle and vaccine. Photo credit: Allison Saeng, Unsplash, recolored by ISB.
The Centers for Disease Control recommends an annual flu shot, the composition of which is updated each flu season, for everyone over 6 months. Kathie Walters of the Hood Lab is a long-time collaborator with the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease and is working to ensure that vaccines against influenza viruses are as effective as possible.
A 3D-generated image of Streptococcus pneumoniae. Image credit: CDC, recolored by ISB.
Pneumonia from an infection by the bacteria Francisella tularensis (tularemia pneumonia) from a tick or deer fly bite, if left untreated, has a mortality rate of up to 60 percent. With funding from the NIH, the Hood Lab’s Kathie Walters and Harborview Medical Center are studying how these bacteria evade lung defenses to identify targets for Francisella vaccine development, which may help understand other lung infections.
Drs. Inyoul Lee and Kelsey Scherler at ISB. Photo credit: Steve Utaski / Remedy Pictures.
COVID-19 remains a serious health issue. In 2023, it was the 10th leading cause of U.S. deaths. Kai Wang and Inyoul Lee of the Hood Lab, with NIH support, are assessing the validity of a new diagnostic test developed by The Ohio State University. The test uses saliva or blood rather than invasive nasal swabs and can provide more detailed diagnostic information.
Senior Research Engineer Christopher Lausted working in the lab at ISB. Photo credit: Scott Eklund / Red Box Pictures.
Early detection of type 1 diabetes (T1D) is crucial for reducing the risk of potentially life-threatening complications. The Hood Lab’s Christopher Lausted with the University of Utah is developing a new type of blood test for T1D that analyzes individual blood particles called extracellular vesicles that promises to improve early diagnosis and accelerate research for improved treatment.
Combat helmets. Photo credit: Unsplash.
Mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI) – in large part from repeated exposure to high explosive blasts – is considered the signature injury of Iraq and Afghanistan combat veterans and can lead to lifetime neurological problems. To improve prediction, prevention, and treatment of mTBI, the Defense Department is supporting research by the Hood Lab’s Inyoul Lee and Kai Wang and the Puget Sound VA Health Care System.
Close-up of blood samples. Photo credit: Robin Layton.
Physiological assessments to diagnose post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) have significant uncertainty, and there is no way to predict who might experience it. With an estimated 11-20 percent of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans experiencing PTSD, there is an urgent need to improve diagnosis and prognosis, the goal of research by the Hood Lab’s Inyoul Lee and Kai Wang with the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research.
Black and white close-up image of a human eye. Photo credit: Unsplash.
An estimated 11-20 percent of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans experience post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), with only one-third of them successfully treated. A key contributor to this low success rate is the variability in PTSD. To move away from one-size-fits-all therapies to more precise and effective psychiatric treatments, the Hood Lab’s Inyoul Lee and Kai Wang, with Defense Department support, are helping identify PTSD sub-types.
Everybody poops, but not every day. An ISB-led research team examined the clinical, lifestyle, and multi-omic data of more than 1,400 healthy adults. How often people poop, they found, can have a large influence on one’s physiology and health.
ISB hosted the Systems Biology of Aging Virtual Workshop in May 2024 for graduate students, postdocs, principal investigators, industry scientists, and educators. The course provided practical tools for performing multi-omic systems biology analyses to advance the study of aging.
An ISB-led study showed nuanced pregnancy outcomes for pregnant individuals with autoimmune disease. The findings reinforce that there isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach, and provides important new avenues for further investigation.
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