ISB studies what happens in our bodies so that we can live longer, healthier lives.
Dr. Sean Gibbons and his lab discuss MICOM data projected on a big screen. Image credit: Trevor Dykstra.
Research suggests that it may be possible to eliminate the correlation between aging and disease. ISB is pioneering a new approach to health by focusing on the biological factors that influence wellness throughout your life. Our goal is to create personalized strategies that will improve health, prevent disease, and enhance quality of life for individuals and communities worldwide.
Dr. Alice Kane with her lab at ISB. Image credit: Trevor Dykstra.
“The biggest risk factor for disease is chronological age, and there are core mechanisms associated with aging that underlie many diseases. If we can understand and target those core aging factors, we can delay the onset of all diseases rather than only one specific disease.”
Dr. Alice Kane, ISB Ling/Obrzut Assistant Professor
Analyzing the mechanisms of aging and longevity to achieve lifetime health
Digesting the role your microbiome plays in disease prevention and health
Studying pregnant women and newborns to predict risks and develop clinical interventions
Discovering ways to preserve the organ that’s decoding this sentence
Improving healthcare by promoting wider participation in cutting-edge medical research
Integrating data to achieve biomedical breakthroughs
ISB is exploring how we can break the link between aging and disease. The term “healthspan” describes the number of years that a person can remain in relatively good health. By studying factors like the aging process, bone health, and frailty, our researchers aim to understand aging and find ways to extend your healthspan by reducing age-related illnesses and helping people stay healthier for longer across all stages of life.
Dr. Alice Kane at a glass whiteboard with her lab at ISB. Photo credit: Trevor Dykstra
Women are more frail – with attendant health problems – than men at every age but have lower risk of mortality. Why this is the case is not clear. To transform how we understand disease and health in aging for all older adults, Ling/Obrzut Assistant Professor Alice Kane’s research, supported by a prestigious new faculty NIH grant, aims to understand frailty and aging at the molecular level.
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 improved understanding of the molecular factors underpinning longevity, healthy aging, and age-related disease of critical importance. The NIH’s Longevity Consortium – in which the Hood Lab’s Noa Rappaport co-leads three projects – aims to better understand these factors and identify possible pathways for drug or other treatments.
Dr. Alice Kane with her lab member Judy Wu at ISB. Photo credit: Trevor Dykstra
Age is the greatest cancer risk factor and plays a role in cancer progression, prognosis, and treatment. Why is not clear. The Kane Lab, with the Heath and Wei labs, is analyzing the aging tumor microenvironment – the interacting cells surrounding a tumor – to determine how it contributes to tumor development and treatment response in older people.
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.
A cake with many candles. Photo credit: Caterina Berger, Unsplash, recolored by ISB.
Centenarians – the one in 5,000 U.S. people who live to 100 or over – have 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, is working to understand these factors.
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.
Popular Mechanics interviewed ISB Co-founder and Professor Dr. Lee Hood for an article titled “Leroy Hood Wants To Show You How To Live for a Really, Really Long Time.” The story features Hood’s big-data approach and a focus on disease prevention – all in the quest to help us live longer.
ISB researchers have constructed a biological BMI that provides a more accurate representation of metabolic health and is more varied, informative and actionable than the long-used classical BMI. ISB Senior Research Scientist Dr. Noa Rappaport discussed biological BMI in a Research Roundtable presentation.
You are more than merely human; you contain multitudes. The trillions of microbes that live inside and on your body make up your personal microbiome. ISB researchers have been studying the microbiome’s role in human health and translating this knowledge into approaches designed to promote better health and well-being for every individual. We’re even developing therapies for treating complex diseases.
Dr. Sean Gibbons with members of his lab. Photo credit: Scott Eklund / Red Box Pictures.
Our gut microbiome – the trillions of microbes in our digestive system – differs substantially between people, even identical twins, and responds in unique ways to dietary intake. To design microbiome-informed personalized diets to optimize our health, the Gibbons Lab, with NIH funding, is studying how the microbiome influences our individual responses to diet.
A colorful bowl of food. Photo credit: Food Photographer, Unsplash, recolored by ISB.
The Gibbons Lab is developing an online dashboard called My Digital Gut to predict the impact of personalized dietary changes before people make them. The program assesses someone’s current diet (no food diary needed) and guides individuals toward personally optimal nutrition. Supported by the ISB Foundation Board, My Digital Gut is in the testing phase seeking to eventually inform personalized clinical care.
Illustration of the individuality of microbes in a given bacterial community. Image credit: Niv Bavarsky for ISB.
The gut microbiome – the hundreds of bacterial species living in the digestive tract – is a complex system with a not fully understood impact on health. Anna Kuchina, the recipient of a promising investigators NIH grant (MIRA), is working to improve the design of probiotics and other microbiome therapies by understanding how gut bacteria interact and cooperate.
Dr. Anna Kuchina working in the lab at ISB. Photo credit: Scott Eklund / Red Box Pictures.
Different bacteria populating the oral cavity form a tight network of interactions that play a role in periodontal disease. With NIH funding, the UW Department of Periodontics and the Kuchina Lab use Kuchina’s microSPLiT technology to understand how bacteria from the oral cavity interact with each other and how these physical interactions affect oral health.
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. Eating a fiber-rich diet, better hydration, and regular exercise tended to better position a person in the bowel movement Goldilocks zone.
The strongest associations with weight loss success or failure – independent of BMI – are found in the genetic capacity of the gut microbiome. These new findings open the door to diagnostic tests that can identify people likely to lose weight with healthy lifestyle changes and those who might need more drastic interventions.
Image credit: Niv Bavarsky.
The gut microbiome is an integral component of the body, but its importance in the human aging process is unclear. ISB researchers and their collaborators have identified distinct signatures in the gut microbiome that are associated with either healthy or unhealthy aging trajectories, which in turn predict survival in a population of older individuals.
Gibbons Lab members working at ISB. Photo credit: Scott Eklund / Red Box Pictures.
ISB Associate Professor Dr. Sean Gibbons is creating an online dashboard called My Digital Gut that will give anyone the ability to predict the impact of nutritional changes before making them. By supporting ISB, you can help us leverage our growing knowledge of the gut microbiome to make nutrition and healthcare personalized, predictive and preventive.
ISB researchers are dedicated to improving maternal and infant health by uncovering the underlying causes of obstetric disorders such as preterm birth and preeclampsia. Our goal is to enhance clinical care and promote better health outcomes for mothers and babies, ensuring long-term health benefits for future generations.
Mother and baby. Photo credit: Unsplash.
In the U.S., preterm birth (10 percent of births), preeclampsia – high blood pressure – (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 a NIH Pathway to Independence grant, is researching the molecular basis of obstetric disorders to improve maternal-fetal clinical care and lifetime health.
3D rendering of bacteria. Image credit: AdobeStock, recolored by ISB.
Infants born to mothers with HIV, but not infected, do not respond well to rotavirus (annually kills > 200,000 children) vaccines and their guts are depleted in the critical newborn microbe Bifidobacterium infantis. The Gibbons Lab, SCRI, and South African researchers, where these births are frequent, are administering a B. infantis probiotic to see if it improves rotavirus vaccine efficacy.
New research highlights strengths of large language models in uncovering social determinants of health while underscoring the need for human oversight and improved de-identification methods.
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.
In light of the recent FDA and CDC decision to approve two updated messenger RNA COVID-19 booster shots, it is imperative to alert the pregnant population of the importance and effectiveness of these vaccines and boosters.
ISB’s brain health research focuses on discovering new insights into the causes of neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s. By exploring innovative approaches and potential risk factors, ISB aims to develop more effective, personalized treatments that will improve brain health and enhance the quality of life for those affected by these conditions.
3D illustration of neurons, Getty Images/Unsplash+.
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.
Dr. Leroy Hood in his office with Dr. Cory Funk. Photo credit: Scott Eklund / Red Box Pictures.
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.
Dr. Lee Hood in his office at ISB. Photo credit: Scott Eklund / Red Box Pictures.
“Healthcare should be ‘n-of-1’ medicine where each individual has their health trajectory measured with a data-driven approach to optimize that trajectory – both for mind and body. We’d like to extend wellness, and to deal with wellness-to-disease transitions with very early diagnosis and reversal.”
Dr. Lee Hood, ISB Co-founder and Professor
We are dedicated to advancing health equity by including in our research the populations that are too often underrepresented in medical studies. Our mission is to identify and address disparities in healthcare, develop treatments that benefit all individuals regardless of race, sex, or ethnicity, and ensure that medical advances are accessible to everyone.
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. ISB’s Hood and Hadlock labs, with NIH support, 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.
Our work focuses on transforming groundbreaking research into real-world clinical solutions. By leveraging advanced tools and data integration, we are speeding up the translation of biomedical knowledge into actionable treatments, which will help doctors provide better, faster care and improve outcomes for patients worldwide.
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.
Example of a knowledge graph. Image credit: Wikimedia Commons, recolored by ISB.
To allow researchers to harness our exploding biomedical knowledge, NIH’s ambitious “Biomedical Data Translator” consortium is building a system to computationally interconnect all known biomedical concepts. Sui Huang and his collaborator Sergio Baranzini at UCSF lead a team in this consortium that develops novel algorithms for integrating patient data to directly validate the knowledge in the Translator.
Servers holding vast amounts of data. Image credit: Microsoft Azure / ISB.
The NIH’s National Center for Advancing Translational Science is creating a Biomedical Data Translator to combine vast amounts of medical research knowledge to speed up the development of new treatments. Eric Deutsch of the Moritz Lab, with Oregon State University and Penn State, is developing standard user interfaces enabling researchers to query and explore biomedical knowledge.
Photo of a person looking up at a starry sky. Photo credit: AdobeStock.
For future multiplanetary travel, NASA is taking a comprehensive molecular profile of animals and humans in microgravity to study its effect on health. Sui Huang supports the team of Sergio Baranzini at UCSF to integrate such data with all existing biomedical knowledge in this cross-agency project funded by the National Science Foundation through its visionary “Open Knowledge Network” initiative.