Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center
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The Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center is an institution in the Cascade neighborhood of Seattle, Washington engaged in scientific research towards the prevention and treatment of cancer. It also treats patients directly, mostly via bone marrow and stem cell transplantation. Its president is Leland H. Hartwell, winner of the 2001 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine. On the staff are E. Donnall Thomas, winner of the 1990 Nobel prize for pioneering bone marrow transplantations and Linda B. Buck, winner of the 2004 prize.
The Hutch, as it is known locally, grew out of the Pacific Northwest Research Foundation, founded in 1956 by Dr. William Hutchinson, which was dedicated to the study of heart surgery, cancer, and diseases of the endocrine system.
In 1964, Dr. Hutchinson's brother Fred Hutchinson, who had been a baseball player for the Seattle Rainiers and Detroit Tigers and later managed the Rainiers, the Tigers, the St. Louis Cardinals, and the Cincinnati Reds, died of lung cancer. The next year, Dr. Hutchinson established the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center as a division of the Pacific Northwest Research Foundation. The FHCRC split off from its parent foundation in 1972, and the physical center was opened in 1975.
Famed astronomer Carl Sagan was a patient at the Hutch during his last illness.
In 2004 Elaine Ostrander and Leonid Kruglyak, both of the Hutch research center, published a studyindirectly (http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/21/science/21dog.html?ex=1400472000&en=6b49c839cde80d81&ei=5007&partner=USERLAND) confirming and greatly expanding upon work published in 2003 by Finnish geneticist Mikko T. Koskinen, who reported some success in using DNA to distinguish among five different dog breeds.
Dr. Ostrander's work was based on DNA samples from 414 dogs representing 85 of the 152 breeds recognized by the American Kennel Club. The research team took samples from 96 locations on the dog genome. Using variations in the DNA sequences from those locations, they were able to assign all but 4 of the 414 dogs to their proper breed. (In one instance they "identified" a beagle as a "perro presa de Canario"--a large, mastiff-like dog often used for guarding and fighting.) The study was published in May 2004 in Science.
Other notable accomplishments by FHCRC members include the winning of three Nobel Prizes in the field of Physiology & Medicine. Current FHCRC president Dr. Leland Hartwell (2001 Nobel Laureate) and basic sciences division member Dr. Linda Buck (2004 Nobel Laureate) both have researched at the center and continue to hold faculty positions at the University of Washington, Seattle. The first Nobel Laureate at the Hutch, E. Donnall Thomas, pioneered work on bone marrow transplantations.
External links
Ostrander and Kruglyak genetic research (http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/21/science/21dog.html?ex=1400472000&en=6b49c839cde80d81&ei=5007&partner=USERLAND)