ISB is committed to banishing cancer.
Dr. Yin Tang, research scientist in the Wei Lab, studying tumor cells in an on-chip cytometry device. Image credit: Scott Eklund/Red Box Pictures.
What the world needs now is effective and accessible cancer therapy. That means the best treatment, at the optimum time, tailored to each patient, and available to all. To that end, we study tumor biology, develop early diagnostics, explore ways to maximize existing treatments, create even better treatments, and promote wider access to the most up-to-date data.
Dr. Jim Heath in the lab at ISB. Image credit: Scott Eklund/Red Box Pictures.
“When I became President of ISB in 2018, I was excited to bring my experience in cancer research at UCLA and Caltech to a fast-moving research environment affiliated with Providence, supported by the community and able to collaborate internally and with other leading research universities and institutes. I remain excited today – even more so – when I see how much we can and are doing to provide hope for patients with cancer and their families.”
Dr. Jim Heath, ISB President and Professor
Helping doctors and patients achieve the best results
Developing new therapies and making them widely accessible
Understanding and predicting what might become cancer
Exploring how tumors start, grow, and respond to treatment
Right now, there is a wide range of approved and potentially viable options available for treating cancer. But each patient is different. Ideally, treatments should address those differences. That’s why we’re developing new tools for selecting the best and most effective treatments for every patient.
An abstracted figure from the Baliga Lab’s Science Advances publication depicting simulated states of core regulatory network topologies.
Every cancer patient’s disease is different. Yet most cancer patients receive a similar set of aggressive treatments resulting in high treatment failure rate and many adverse side effects. By deeply characterizing a patient’s risk of progression, the Baliga Lab’s SYGNAL technology helps physicians select personalized treatment plans.
Photo of the single-cell on-chip metabolic cytometry device in use in the ISB optic lab. Photo credit: ISB.
The Wei Lab’s MetaboCore uses a simple needle biopsy and analyzes tumor metabolism to quickly find cancer drug resistance and detect immune responses predictive of immunotherapy success, speeding up the process of finding an effective treatment. Early clinical studies in ovarian, colorectal, and bile duct cancers show MetaboCore to be a fast and reliable diagnostic tool.
A proteomics UMAP (Uniform Manifold Approximation and Projection) image overlayed onto a microscopy image of an ovarian cancer tumor. Image credit: Chong Xia/ISB.
Cancer researchers have shown that sequencing rather than combining immunotherapies with drugs targeting cancer cells can dramatically improve outcomes for some patients. Under the leadership of Jim Heath, ISB, Yale and UCLA are collaborating to optimize therapy sequencing for many more patients.
Glioblastoma on T2 MR image. Image credit: WikiLectures, recolored by ISB.
Patients with GBM have median survival of 12-14 months and high recurrence rate, in part because treatment itself makes GBM cells more drug-resistant. In partnership with Swedish Neuroscience Institute, Baliga Lab is leading a study to prevent drug resistance and improve clinical outcomes in GBM patients by personalizing cocktails of FDA drugs approved for other uses.
Image from the NCI Human Tumor Atas Network website.
Launched in 2016, one of the initial White House Cancer Moonshot Initiatives is the Human Tumor Atlas Network to advance understanding of tumor evolution and refine treatment choices for a diverse population of people with cancer. ISB with Sage Bionetworks, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center plays a central role directing the Network’s Data Coordinating Center.
Cover image from the NCI Imaging Data Commons website. Courtesy NCI IDC.
Health care providers regularly use PET, MRI and other imaging tools for cancer treatment. With AI advances, researchers use these and other images to understand cancer occurrence and treatment options. In 2020, the National Cancer Institute, with participation from ISB and others, launched the cloud-based Imaging Data Commons giving researchers and clinicians broad access to imaging data and associated analytical tools.
“Our lab is creating SYGNAL to help physicians make personalized care decisions, just like Google Maps ranks routes depending on the status of traffic and road closures.”
“If we can develop a way to determine the optimum timing and sequence for cancer immunotherapy and targeted cancer cell treatments, it will offer tremendous opportunities for improving patient outcomes.”
“Our lab is creating MetaboCore as a simple, rapid, and reliable way for physicians to determine if a tumor will resist drugs so they are not given needlessly and to predict response to immunotherapy.”
Several ISB labs are pioneering the field of personalized precision cancer treatments. We’re creating therapies that are tailored to individual patients, improving immunotherapy approaches, finding cures for HPV-related cancers, helping develop groundbreaking tools such as digital twins, and working hard to bridge the gap between data collection and analysis.
Abstracted image of a cancer regulome from ISB-CGC. Image credit: ISB.
Patients, health care providers and researchers are creating vast troves of data essential to developing precision cancer therapies. To advance care, this data must be widely shared. ISB hosts one of three National Cancer Institute Cloud Resources that allow access and provide analytical tools to mine terabytes of data that would not otherwise be so easily accessible.
Test tubes. Photo credit: Louis Reed/Unsplash, recolored by ISB.
T-cell receptor (TCR) therapies are extremely promising for treating patients with advanced malignancies, but are often designed so that only a small fraction of patients can be treated. Supported by the Parker Institute and the NCI, the Heath Lab is developing approaches so that all patients, regardless of their genetics, can benefit from such treatments.
Image of Dr. Jim Heath with former grad student Dr. Jingyi Xie working in the lab at ISB. Photo credit: Scott Eklund / Red Box Pictures.
There are few treatment options for advanced cervical, head and neck and other HPV cancers. With support from the Washington State Care Foundation, the Heath Lab with Swedish, UCLA, and the City of Hope is developing cell-based immunotherapies for advanced HPV cancers. A multi-site clinical trial is expected to launch mid 2025.
Brightfield image of a KRAS mutant pancreas organoid; scale 1000 μm. Image Credit: ISB Collaborator, Kemp Laboratory – Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center, from their publication.
The ISB is part of a research network that aims to develop personalized effective cancer therapies. Collaborators at Fred Hutch grow patient-derived tumor cells into 3D tissue cultures called organoids, which act like mini-tumors in a dish, and can be used to safely test drugs. The ISB team develops computational approaches that identify the most effective drugs for individual patients.
Digital twin concept. Image: AdobeStock/ISB.
ISB is building a digital twin system for acute myeloid leukemia (AML), a cancer of the blood and bone marrow. A digital twin – a computer simulation of a patient allowing continuous monitoring and testing of treatment plans – enables physicians and patients to improve care.
Jimmi Hopkins, former Research Associate, working in the Heath Lab. Photo credit: Scott Eklund / Red Box Pictures.
ISB’s multi-pronged and collaborative approach to cancer is unique. We have made great strides in developing computational tools and experimental therapeutics. However, our work is far from done. Your support is crucial to achieving our goal of making precision treatments available to all.
ISB researchers are dedicated to the early detection and diagnosis of cancer, aiming to improve treatment outcomes and survival rates. Through innovative techniques such as liquid biopsies, enhanced screening methods, and targeted prevention strategies, we work to identify cancer earlier and enable more timely and effective interventions.
Sarah Li, Lab Instrumentation Manager, working in the Heath Lab. Photo credit: Scott Eklund / Red Box Pictures.
Many women are at high genetic risk of developing ovarian cancer. Strategies for early disease detection, and for preventative, non-surgical treatments, are urgently needed. The Swedish Cancer Institute’s Paul G. Allen Research Center and the Heath Lab are collaborating to address both of these challenges.
Close up of lab work at ISB. Photo credit: Scott Eklund / Red Box Pictures.
Cancer screening has led to a surge in finding precancerous lesions but only a small percentage will become clinical tumors. According to Huang’s new theory, the dormant (pre-)cancer cells can experience instability and either tip into the cell growth fate or stay dormant. The Huang Lab, with University of Texas Austin, conducts experiments to understand this critical transition.
Dr. Wei Wei with his lab at ISB. Photo credit: Scott Eklund / Red Box Pictures.
Tumor tissue samples, used by oncologists to prescribe and monitor immunotherapy, are a limiting factor in personalized immunotherapy. The tumor may be too small, removed without samples and/or repeat biopsies may be too difficult for the patient. Funded by the National Cancer Institute, the Wei Lab is developing a blood-based tool that leverages circulating tumor cells to replace tissue biopsies.
Dr. Wei Wei has developed a promising new companion diagnostic tool called MetaboCore to help physicians quickly select the most effective systemic therapy for each cancer patient.
ISB hosted a full-day symposium – titled Resonance – celebrating the life and scientific contributions of Professor Ilya Shmulevich, who passed away in April 2024 from complications of acute myeloid leukemia.
Glioblastoma is one of the deadliest and most aggressive forms of primary brain cancer in adults and is known for its ability to resist treatment and to recur. ISB researchers have made breakthrough discoveries in understanding the mechanisms behind acquired resistance, focusing on a rare and stubborn group of cells within tumors called glioma stem-like cells.
For many cancer patients, treatments stop working as tumor cells adapt and become resistant. Our researchers are uncovering the early signs of treatment resistance, to understand how and why cancer cells grow or remain dormant. We’re developing stealth approaches to target tumor cells and their surrounding tissues – offering new hope for therapies that will last.
Waddington’s epigenetic landscape. By depicting the underside of the surface, Waddington illustrated the idea that genes can change the landscape during evolution. Image courtesy: tandfonline.com.
Cancer cells communicate to make a collective decision to initiate a growing tumor, stay dormant or reach a threshold beyond which the tumor does not grow. The Huang Lab is working with the University of Texas Austin to construct mathematical models of how cell-cell communication influence tumor growth dynamics.
Dr. Sui Huang presenting to his lab in an ISB conference room. Photo credit: Scott Eklund / Red Box Pictures.
STORMing Cancer, a multinational team in the UK Cancer Grand Challenges program, seeks to explain why so many cancers are preceded by chronic inflammation. As part of this team the Huang Lab uses single-cell sequencing of esophagus tumors and surrounding immune cells, to systematically dissect the stages through which inflammation resulting from the common esophageal reflux disease, leads to cancer.
Dr. Yin Tang in the optics lab at ISB. Photo credit: Trevor Dykstra.
Resistance to cancer therapies is inevitable, persistent and often adaptive rather than genetic. Funded by the NCI and the Washington State CARE Foundation, the Wei Lab has discovered that adaptive responses start within hours of drug exposure. This response is mutable, making identifying ways to prevent or reverse it promising.
“The paradox of cancer treatment is that the treatment itself induces drastic changes in the cells that it does not kill: it makes them more malignant and treatment resistant. I am developing models to understand this double-edged sword effect, which offers untapped potential for improving treatment.”