Media Coverage (Cancers)

Researchers from ISB’s Wei and Heath labs show that cancer cells can quickly reprogram themselves in response to treatment, using epigenetic changes to survive drugs — revealing that resistance may begin much earlier than previously understood.

Research out of ISB’s Wei Lab reveals how melanoma cells rapidly adapt to targeted therapy through stress-driven changes and NF-κB-mediated chromatin remodeling. The article explores how these early survival mechanisms contribute to drug resistance and highlights potential new therapeutic strategies to improve treatment outcomes.

ISB’s Dr. Wei Wei contributed to research showing that certain lung cancers can shift identity and exist in hybrid states, helping explain treatment resistance and suggesting new approaches to diagnosis and therapy for these aggressive, often underdiagnosed tumors.

This profile details Lee Hood and his decades-long mission to transform medicine through systems biology and predictive health. Hood outlines how large-scale biological data and longitudinal studies could enable earlier detection of disease and more proactive healthcare.

The Institute for Systems Biology (ISB) has been awarded a 2025 AWS Imagine Grant — funding that will accelerate the development of its generative-AI platform Tarpon, which creates “digital fingerprints” of T-cell receptors, enabling faster discovery and design of targeted immunotherapies.

This feature traces the remarkable arc of Mary Brunkow — from undergraduate at the University of Washington to 2025 Nobel Laureate — spotlighting her foundational discovery of the gene FOXP3, and how that breakthrough unlocked a new understanding of immune-system self-tolerance. The story also reflects on the years of basic research, the long-standing impact on immunology, and how Brunkow’s journey connects back to her roots in Seattle’s scientific community.

University of Washington alum Mary Brunkow has been awarded the 2025 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for pioneering research into how the immune system is prevented from attacking the body’s own tissues – work that has profound implications for autoimmune disease, cancer therapies, and transplant medicine.

Explained PH includes ISB’s Dr. Mary Brunkow among the 2025 Nobel laureates whose discoveries revolutionized our understanding of the immune system. (Note – minor editorial inconsistencies included in original text.)