Nobel Prize research: Understanding how the body functions often leads to medical breakthroughs

Many of you no doubt heard the good news this fall that Fred Hutchinson’s Dr. Linda Buck was awarded the 2004 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine for her groundbreaking research on the olfactory system — the complex network that underlies our sense of smell. Linda’s discovery of a family of proteins that detect odors and how they relay signals to the brain has helped reveal how mammals can discriminate between a nearly infinite number of smells and how they are perceived and remembered by the brain. This landmark achievement represents a major leap in our understanding of the nervous system.

What may be puzzling, though, is why Fred Hutchinson recruits researchers like Linda who work on a wide variety of problems seemingly unrelated to cancer. Just as a good automobile mechanic must know the inner workings of an engine to successfully diagnose and repair a car problem, scientists can’t expect to detect, prevent and treat disease without knowing how cells and organisms function when they are healthy.

Research on the basic properties of cells and organisms turns out to be a remarkably powerful strategy for making breakthroughs in the understanding, treatment and prevention of cancer and other serious diseases. In fact, more recent successful therapies and tests for cancer have been spawned by this kind of fundamental research — including discoveries made here at the center — than any other avenue of study.

Because of the striking similarity between all living creatures, simple organisms often turn out to be the best models for studying these basic principles of biology. Many Fred Hutchinson scientists in our Fundamental Research Initiative conduct these investigations with yeast, fruit flies and worms as well as with human cells grown in the lab.

The lifesaving applications of fundamental findings — such as how a yeast cell divides, how a fruit fly wing develops or how a mouse perceives smell — may not be known for years or even decades after the initial discovery is made. Yet we are committed to investing in creative fundamental researchers like Linda because our track record has shown time and again that this research pays off.

Among the many clinical outcomes to emerge from Fred Hutchinson’s fundamental research are the development of a prognostic test for breast cancer, a diagnostic test for the autoimmune disease lupus and successful techniques for gene therapy of cancer and other diseases.

I invite you to read more about basic research at Fred Hutchinson in the story about Linda and in the story about Dr. Harmit Malik, whose research on evolutionary biology is revealing unusual insight into the HIV virus. These and other fundamental investigations hold the keys to future breakthroughs that will improve the quality of life for people with cancer, HIV and other serious diseases. With your financial help, we will continue to support the visionary research that will be the next milestones in our understanding of cancer — and perhaps the next Nobel Prize.

Lee Hartwell
President & Director