3 Bullets: Papillary thyroid cancer represents 80 percent of all thyroid cancer cases. Integrative analysis resulted in the detection of significant molecular alterations not previously reported in the disease. ISB researchers identified microRNAs which may lead to more precise therapy. By Lisa Iype Papillary thyroid cancer (PTC) is the most common type of thyroid cancer, accounting for 80 percent of all cases. As part of The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA)…
Above: Cover of the November 2014 issue of Real Simple Magazine A team at ISB has been working on the 100K Wellness Project, which you read about here. The November issue of Real Simple Magazine has a feature story on “What Exactly is Wellness?” It includes a mention of our wellness study and a comment from Dr. Nathan Price, ISB associate director. “Perhaps one reason why wellness programs aren’t yet…
By ISBUSA Since we announced that we got a $6.5 million contract from NCI to develop the Cancer Genomics Cloud pilot project, we’ve gotten some great press from around the world. It doesn’t hurt that one of our partners is Google, of course. Here are some of the headlines from around the world: Puget Sound Business Journal: Cancer in the cloud: Institute for Systems Biology teams up with Google NBCNews.com:…
Pictured above: Dr. Qiang Tian, left, and Dr. Edward Lin, right, discuss single-cell analysis technologies developed at Institute for Systems Biology in Seattle. September 22, 2014 – ISB has received a $2.3 million NIH grant over four years in response to NCI’s “Provocative Questions” Initiative. The project will apply ISB’s most advanced single-cell omics technologies to an innovative clinical trial for colorectal cancer (ADAPT). Principal investigator Qiang Tian, MD, PhD,…
Dr. Lee Hood received the IEEE Medal for Innovations in Healthcare Technology at a ceremony in Amsterdam on Aug. 23, 2014. Please watch a video of his acceptance speech here. IEEE Spectrum Magazine also published an article featuring an interview with Lee: “Medicine’s Next Big Mission: Understanding Wellness” Read article…
WHAT YOU SAW IN THE NEWS: On Aug. 14, Gov. Jay Inslee announced that the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices awarded Washington State a $170,000 grant to support the launch of the STEM Education Innovation Alliance, which is tasked with bringing together business leaders and educators in order to help more students acquire the science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) skills they need to qualify for the increasing…
3 Bullets: Adams-Oliver syndrome (AOS) is a rare congenital disease characterized by scalp lesions and limb defects. Additional vascular abnormalities and heart defects can lead to early death in some patients. By analyzing twelve families affected with the disease, we identified causal mutations in a new disease gene, NOTCH1, in five families. NOTCH1 is likely to be the major cause of AOS. NOTCH1 codes for a transcription factor that governs…
3 Bullets: Aggressive tumor growth is linked to high activity of a macromolecular assembly called RNA polymerase I. ISB and FHCRC researchers collaborate to map the architecture of the assembly using a powerful crosslinking-mass spectrometry (CXMS) technology. Structural maps provide important insights into therapeutic targets for cancer treatment. By Mark Gillespie Rapidly growing tumor cells require large amounts of protein for their survival. This increased protein synthesis, or translation, can…
3 Bullets: Computer simulation is a promising way to model multicellular biological systems to help understand complexity underlying health and disease. Biocellion is a high-performance computing (HPC) framework that enables the simulation of billions of cells across multiple scales. Biocellion facilitates researchers without HPC expertise to easily build and simulate large models. By Theo Knijnenburg How do molecular changes, such as a mutation in the DNA or infection by a…
KUOW's Marcie Sillman and producer Amina Al-Sadi interviewed Dr. Lee Hood about P4 medicine and the 100K Wellness Project. This 29-minute recording is a great conversation about Lee's vision for how to turn healthcare on its head. Listen to the podcast. Learn more about the 100K Wellness Project.
The NIH's National Institute of General Medical Sciences has issued a Biotechnology Resource Grant of $10.9 million over five years to the National Center for Dynamic Interactome Research (ncdir.org) project. This project is a collaboration among The Rockefeller University, Institute for Systems Biology, Seattle BioMed, University of California at San Francisco, New York University and New York Structural Biology Center. Michael Rout, of The Rockefeller University, is the Program Director/Principal…
3 Bullets: Gastric cancer has a high mortality rate, but current classification systems haven’t been effective in helping to identify subtypes relevant for treatment of the disease. TCGA researchers have integrated molecular data from 295 stomach tumors and have discovered four subtypes of gastric cancer. Stratification of patients into these four subtypes paves the way for the development of new personalized therapies. By Theo Knijnenburg Gastric cancer is among the…
3 Bullets: Microbes are efficient because their streamlined genomes allow them to evolve and adapt rapidly to complex environmental changes. Decoding the highly-compressed information within a microbial genome requires sophisticated systems biology tools to map the genetic programs, and understand how they are executed. ISB researchers invented novel algorithms to unzip and decode microbial genomes into the EGRIN 2.0, an open-access multiscale model that captures instructions for executing the dynamic…
3 Bullets: Institute for Systems Biology and Seattle BioMed researchers collaborated and discovered a new protein post-translational modification in the human pathogen Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Post-translational modifications are essential mechanisms used by cells to diversify protein functions and ISB scientists identified the rare phosphorylated tyrosine post translational modification on Mycobacterium tuberculosis proteins using mass spectrometry. Inhibiting phosphotyrosine modified amino acids in Mycobacterium tuberculosis severely limits the growth of this widespread deadly…
Photo above: Dr. Vineet Sangar, right, a postdoc in the Price Lab at ISB, explains proteomics technology to a group of community college faculty, who participated in a systems biology workshop in May 2014. By Dana Riley Black Director of Logan Center for Education Over the past two decades, systems biology has revolutionized traditional approaches to answering complex biological questions. The rapid advancement of computational power and the increased access…
Dr. Lee Hood, president of ISB, was featured in a cover story for the spring 2014 issue of HFMA (Healthcare Financial Management Association) Leadership Magazine. He spoke on the future of personalized medicine. “Wellness is not going to emerge out of the current healthcare industry. New thrusts don’t emerge out of old bureaucracies. New approaches emerge out of new institutions that are set up for them.” – Dr. Lee Hood…
(Photo: Bothell High School teacher Cynthia McIntyre (above left) and ISB’s Chris Plaisier (above right), a senior research scientist in the Baliga Lab, participated in Washington Alliance for Better Schools’ event “A Celebration of STEM” which took place MOHAI on May 6.) ISB’s K-12 STEM Education work On May 6, Washington Alliance for Better Schools held “A Celebration of STEM” at MOHAI to showcase projects that middle and high school…
