The Innovator Award Program at Institute for Systems Biology is an annual internal initiative started in 2017 that aims to stimulate creativity, innovation and collaboration within ISB, to provide funding support for high-risk, high-reward projects, and to develop new technologies and discoveries that will impact the entire research organization.
When: Thursday, October 20, 12-1 pm Where: Institute for Systems Biology, Main Floor Auditorium, 401 Terry Ave North What: Ruth West will present her pioneering research practice at the intersections of art, science and media. This event is made possible through the Consilience program at ISB and is free and open to the public. Ruth West is in Seattle to exhibit her work ATLAS in silico as part of the…
ISB researchers and their colleagues from the Center for Infectious Disease Research held the 5th annual joint poster session on June 30. The event kicked off with lightning talks, which featured two-minute research summaries from each scientist who submitted a poster. Following the lightning talks, researchers were able to peruse posters and chat with colleagues about any potential collaborations. ISB and CIDResearch takes turns hosting the event, which is intended…
3 Bullets: Mycobacterium tuberculosis (MTB) infects more than 1.5 billion people worldwide partly due to its ability to sense and adapt to the broad range of hostile environments that exist within hosts. To study how MTB controls its responses at a molecular level, ISB researchers and their collaborators at Seattle Biomed perturbed almost all MTB transcription factor regulators and identified the affected genes. This comprehensive map of molecular switches in…
3 Bullets: ‘Big data’ cancer research has revealed a new spectrum of genetic mutations across tumors that need understanding. Existing methods for analyzing DNA defects in cancer are blind to how those mutations actually behave. ISB scientists developed a new approach using physics- and structure-based modeling to systematically assess the spectrum of mutations that arise in several gene regulatory proteins in cancer. By Jake Valenzuela and Justin Ashworth A significant…
3 Bullets: Dengue virus is the most prevalent mosquito-borne virus worldwide, infecting an estimated 400 million people per year and causing about 25,000 deaths. It’s necessary to understand the molecular mechanisms of dengue replication in order to develop an effective treatment. Researchers at ISB and Seattle BioMed developed a novel approach for identifying host proteins that associate with dengue replication machinery. By Thurston Herricks Dengue virus (DENV) infects approximately 400…
3 Bullets: The Institute for Systems Biology and Seattle BioMed have collaborated to reconstruct the gene regulatory network of the human pathogen Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Finely tuned gene regulation has allowed Mycobacterium tuberculosis to survive unnoticed in an apparently healthy host for decades; understanding those subtleties is critical for advancing treatment. The identification of co-regulated sets of genes and their regulatory influences offers validated predictions that will help guide future research…
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…
Photo: Theo Knijnenburg, a research scientist in ISB's Shmulevich Lab, presentaed a summary of his work related to gene mutations and cancer drug sensitivity. Systems biology is about the culture as much as a scientific approach. ISB and Seattle BioMed have an inter-institutional agreement that enables the collective to benefit from shared knowledge and technology resources. For the second consecutive year, we held Lightning Talks (June 12) to allow researchers…
(Photo above: ISB’s Dr. Ilya Shmulevich describes his lab’s work in The Cancer Genome Atlas project and how ISB and FHCRC could collaborate.) Big health challenges require big science. Cancers are prime examples of overwhelmingly complex diseases that need the power of a cross-disciplinary, systems biology approach to decipher the underlying dysfunctional gene networks in order to find ways to prevent and manage the diseases and develop more effective therapies….
WHAT YOU HEARD IN THE NEWS: NPR aired this story (on Sept. 5) about research just published in the journal Nature Genetics suggesting that tuberculosis may have existed more than 70,000 years ago. Tuberculosis Hitched a Ride When Early Humans Left Africa ‘ “The old, traditional view was that tuberculosis emerged during the Neolithic transition when people started to domesticate animals and develop agriculture, which started about 10,000 years ago,”…
ISB will collaborate with Seattle BioMed and ETH Zurich on a $16.6 million tuberculosis grant from the National Institutes of Health. Seattle BioMed issued this press release today: FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE SEATTLE, AUG. 15 — Seattle BioMed has been awarded a grant from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, part of the National Institutes of Health, that will take a comprehensive systems approach to the problem of tuberculosis…
What You Saw in the News: On Feb. 18, The New York Times published a front-page story headlined “Obama Seeking to Boost Study of Human Brain.” (Download PDF: ObamaNYTBrainMap.) While the administration has not formally announced this brain mapping project, the NYT was able to gather enough details from scientists involved in planning the project to publish a report. Participating government agencies and private foundations include the…
Several ISB staffers participated in Startup Weekend UW on Jan. 25-27. Graduate student Karlyn Beer and software engineer Wei-Ju Wu, both of the Baliga Group, pitched PoorMe.co, a public health social network. Steven Lewis, a software engineer in the Shmulevich Group, was part of team PerFit, which is an app that creates a 3D body scan so that you can virtually try on clothes online. Read about Steven’s experience at…
ISB NEWS We have been celebrating Dr. Lee Hood’s National Medal of Science, which he received during a White House ceremony on Feb. 1. While the medal honors Lee’s career as a visionary scientist, we would like to thank all the past and current collaborators who have contributed to the success of not only Lee but of ISB, too. ISB has always valued collaboration across disciplines as well as between…
On Nov. 1, ISB and San Diego-based Sapphire Energy announced a strategic partnership to apply systems biology to algae with the goal of significantly increasing oil yield and improving resistance to crop predators and environmental factors in order to further the advancement of commercialized algae biofuel production. “Together, we have complementary expertise that will allow us to understand, reverse engineer and rationally alter the gene networks for fuel production in…
Sapphire Energy and ISB today announced a partnership that will lead to exciting discoveries in commercial algae fuel production. You can read the release here. But to hear directly from Dr. Nitin Baliga, who is ISB's Director for Integrative Biology, on why this partnership is unique, watch this short interview.
In May, ISB welcomed Dr. Robert Lipshutz as our Senior Vice President for Strategic Partnerships and Chief Business Officer. Rob came to us after having spent 19 years as an executive at Affymetrix, which develops genetic analysis technology. Rob has a PhD in mathematics and is looking forward to helping ISB expand our reach.
