Fun science—without the homework

If you’re a big science fan and you live in the Seattle area, you should definitely stop by one—or all—of our “Science for Life” lectures, which get under way on Feb. 4. The series breaks down the concepts—and better yet, it skips the homework—while offering you a chance to interact with world-class researchers in a fun, informal and hands-on atmosphere, according to Robbie Phillips, one of the organizers of the event at the Hutchinson Center.

And this year, we have quite a stellar lineup of researchers, with all four recognized as world leaders in their fields. The entire series is open to the public, and we still have a few seats left for the first one this week. All the lectures will be from 7-8:30 p.m. at the Hutchinson
Center, 1100 Fairview Ave. N., Seattle,
in the Thomas Building
Pelton Auditorium.

If you want to sign up, give Sarah Tribolet a call at 206-667-4211.

Here’s a description for each of the lectures:

The evolutionary arms race, Feb. 4

Evolutionary change is driven by competition between genes and proteins with opposing functions. As viruses and bacteria develop new ways to outwit the immune system, the immune system must adapt and fight back. By looking at rapidly evolving DNA, Dr. Harmit Malik identifies and studies the changes in our ability to fight infections and diseases like cancer.

Fishing for answers

There’s a chilly room in one of the Hutchinson Center’s buildings filled with burbling fish tanks. But these aren’t the typical aquariums you see in office settings, the kind that mesmerize little ones searching for Nemo. Rather, these reservoirs house Gasterosteus aculeatus, better known as threespine sticklebacks, a little fish making a big splash in our study of human disease.

These small vertebrates, named for the sharp spines on their backs and closely related to seahorses, live in oceans and coastal rivers and streams in North America, Japan, northern Europe and northern Asia. To the best of anyone’s knowledge, they don’t get cancer. So what are they doing in a cancer research center?

Yeast: Not just for baking and brewing

As an amateur baker (and expert taster, if I do say so myself), I first consider yeast in its most delicious context—that essential ingredient when I endeavor to bake a crusty loaf of bread, or when I sip a delightful draft microbrew at happy hour. But as a writer for the Hutchinson Center, I now realize how much these tiny fungi also mean to the scientific and medical world.

Yes, it’s true that yeast cells do not get cancer like we humans do. But biologists have discovered in the last few decades that good old Saccharomyces cerevisiae can tell us more about ourselves than one might expect.

Grunting at the treadmill

It’s that time of the month—when workout joints all over the nation are filled to the rafters with what I call “New Year’s resolutes.”

You know who you are: splashing like a madman in my swimming lane; grunting at the treadmill; making time at the water cooler; sweating away those Christmas cookies in the sauna. It makes me wants to stay home.

But will you be there come February?

Here’s one reason you should: medical researchers believe that 25 percent of all cancers may be caused by lack of physical activity and excess weight. That’s right: 25 percent. When I first heard that statistic from one of our Hutchinson Center researchers, I was frankly quite surprised. Everybody knows that exercise is good, but a tool against cancer?

Yoga: Posers need not apply

The author practices Tree Pose near Lake Union in Seattle. (Photo by Dean Forbes)

With computers, e-mail and smartphones contributing to our “do more faster” mantra, it’s no wonder an estimated 16 million Americans have turned to yoga as a counterbalance to today’s competitive, technologically-driven society.

For the most part, these yogis are doing Hatha Yoga, the practice of postures or asana, with varying elements from yoga’s seven other “limbs,” which include breathing exercises, meditation and other guides to achieving harmony of the mind, body and spirit.

Now there’s a movement under way to turn the perfection of yoga poses into an Olympic sport. In fact, Rajashree Choudhury and her husband Bikram—the man who branded a series of 26 postures practiced in rooms heated to 105-degrees Fahrenheit—began staging international competitions in 2003.

I think competitive yoga is a bad idea. It’s the antithesis of the yoga I study, practice and teach and could further alienate those who could most benefit from yoga’s healing effects. The validation we seek already exists inside ourselves, and the intentional practice of yoga postures can help us get there. Yoga facilitates the move from “disconnected doing” into a greater awareness of being. In the process, healing often happens.

The mountains of our lives

On one of those rare winter days in Seattle, when not a single cloud dots the sky and the air is crisp and clear, it’s possible, from a proper vantage point, to see mountains all around.

Far to the west is the Olympic range covered in white from top to bottom. Peeking above Seattle’s many hilly neighborhoods north of the city is Mount Baker. An unbroken necklace of peaks rises out of the east, the mighty Cascade Mountains. And to the south is our eternal sentinel, an irresistible ice cream cone better known as Mount Rainier.

Today—a couple of days before Christmas—is such a day. The afternoon sun has broken free of the clouds and illuminates peaks all around in a blaze of golden light. For many people who live in the Seattle metropolitan area the mountains are nothing but background, beautiful peaks that hide from view for large portions of the year.

And then there are those who find their pull irresistible. To see them in the distance is simply an invitation to climb them. Earlier this year, I interviewed two such people for Quest magazine.

I wrote about Barbara Gregory and Lynn Lippert because they were taking part in the Hutchinson Center’s Climb to Fight Breast Cancer. Both had spent most of their summer training in some of these mountains so they could achieve even higher plateaus.

High risks, higher rewards

Looking at microparticles requires macrodollars

Part of the fun of being a science writer at the Hutchinson Center is having an all-access pass to our researchers and their innovative and compelling work. I met one such scientist, Dr. Muneesh Tewari, a couple of years ago when I interviewed him about his explorations of micro-RNAs, molecules that put the brakes on healthy cell growth and utterly fail at other times, allowing cancerous tumors to develop.

I particularly admire brilliant young researchers like Muneesh. Not only have they invested a great percentage of early years and funds in education and scientific training—often delaying milestones like putting down roots or starting families—but as academic researchers, they’ve eschewed the safer paths of biotech or big pharma jobs and must compete for hard-to-get federal funding that usually rewards long track records and the tweaking of proven ideas.

So I was especially happy to hear of Muneesh’s success this year in securing multi-year grants worth more than $1 million from three different foundations. His most recent award, from the Entertainment Industry Foundation’s Stand Up To Cancer program, was one of only 13 given to young scientists nationwide and aimed at supporting high risk/high reward cancer research.

Loading the bases against cancer

Sure, a fascination with public health and science issues attracted me to my current writing post at the Hutchinson Center. But I’ll admit it: The longtime baseball fan in me couldn’t help but perk up when I learned, back in the job-application phase, that this scientific research institution’s history indirectly involves America’s favorite pastime.

The Center's namesake, Fred Hutchinson, played for the Detroit Tigers before succumbing to lung cancer. (Credit: Hutchinson Center file photo)

That’s right: Our namesake, Fred Hutchinson, made his career as a determined, no-nonsense athlete who pitched for the Detroit Tigers and later managed three big-league clubs. Shortly after he guided the 1961 Cincinnati Reds to World Series glory, tragedy struck: “Hutch,” as he was known, discovered small lumps in his throat and upper chest and died of lung cancer scarcely a year later, at the age of 45.

His surgeon brother, Dr. Bill Hutchinson, went on to found a research center that remains dedicated to eliminating the suffering and deaths caused by this disease.

Meanwhile, Hutch’s ties to baseball live on through a special award given annually to contemporary Major League Baseball players who display the same honor, courage and dedication as he did, both on and off the field.

As you may have heard, our selection committee recently picked Mark Teahen, a longtime third baseman for the Kansas City Royals who was recently acquired by the Chicago White Sox, to receive the 2009 Hutch Award at a benefit luncheon in January.

A vaccination against ignorance

World AIDS Day gets a boost with encouraging news out of South Africa

A day before World AIDS Day on Dec. 1, researchers and employees of the Hutchinson Center gathered to commemorate the annual event. We may be better known as a cancer research center, but we’re also deeply immersed in HIV/AIDS research.

And because our researchers lead the HIV Vaccine Trials Network, a worldwide effort to find an effective and safe vaccine against this disease, the day carries special significance. It remains, of course, a somber commemoration, but certainly not as somber as it would have been in past years. Today, researchers around the world are cautiously optimistic that we’re on the right track to developing an effective HIV vaccine—more so after a vaccine trial in Thailand earlier this year appeared to reduce the acquisition of HIV by about 30 percent.

Dr. Larry Corey

“While these results are not at the level we will need to effectively control the AIDS pandemic, it is an indication that scientists will reach the goal of developing an effective HIV vaccine,” said Dr. Larry Corey, senior vice president and co-director of the Hutchinson Center’s Vaccine and Infectious Disease Institute and principal investigator with the Vaccine Trials Network. “There are several other vaccine candidates in the research pipeline” and the encouraging results in Thailand “will provide renewed enthusiasm for human clinical trials, as well as additional HIV vaccine discovery,” he said.

‘Every child our own’

In Uganda: A partnership born to save lives

In recent years, the Hutchinson Center’s presence has been quietly growing in Uganda. This presence has emerged in the form of a partnership with the potential to expand knowledge about how to fight infection-related cancers and, perhaps, expand the way people in this country think about people living with cancer 9,000 miles away.

I learned about the Center’s partnership with the Uganda Cancer Institute in 2007 when I interviewed Dr. Jackson Orem, the institute’s director and, at the time, the sole oncologist in a country of nearly 30 million people. The soft-spoken words of this man on a mission in Seattle gave voice to millions of Ugandans who live with one of the highest rates of cancer in the world. To meet him was to glimpse the depth of his commitment, the urgency of his country’s need, and understand, immediately, what the Hutchinson Center could give and gain in Uganda.

When we think of cancer, Africa seldom comes to mind. After all, cancer is largely a disease of old age, and we hear that in some African nations, people seldom get there. Cancer is a big reason why. The two groups most affected are middle-aged adults and children under the age of 12. I learned of one such child from Erica Sessle, managing director of the Uganda Program on Cancer and Infectious Diseases.

In December 2006, while touring the Uganda Cancer Institute, an unseen crying child made Sessle stop. She walked back, looked into the room and saw a malnourished, 11-year-old girl, Olivia.