SEPTEMBER 2023
 
IN THIS NEWSLETTER:

  • From the Cancer Consortium
  • In the Spotlight
  • CCSG Updates
  • Save the Date - Upcoming Events
  • From the Office of Community Outreach & Engagement
  • From the Office of Translational Research
  • From the Consortium Shared Resources
  • From Clinical Research Support
  • Consortium Leader Close Up: Dr. Cyrus Ghajar
 

FROM THE CANCER CONSORTIUM

In the Spotlight

The following interinstitutional Cancer Consortium collaborations were included in the most recent edition of the Science Spotlight:
  • "Respiratory syncytial virus infection among people experiencing homelessness" featured collaborative work by Drs. Eric Chow (Cancer Epidemiology, Prevention & Control; Fred Hutch), Michael Boeckh (Cancer Immunology; Fred Hutch), Janet Englund (Hematologic Malignancies; Seattle Children's), Jay Shendure (Cancer Basic Biology; UW), and Lea Starita (Cancer Basic Biology; UW).
  • "Does prostate cancer have a goldilocks mentality when it comes to androgens?" featured collaborative work by Drs. Elahe Mostaghel (Prostate Cancer; Fred Hutch), Stephen Plymate (Prostate Cancer; UW), Eva Corey (Prostate Cancer; UW), Michael Haffner (Prostate Cancer; Fred Hutch), and Pete Nelson (Prostate Cancer; Fred Hutch).
  • "CAF-like cells remodel the Ewing sarcoma tumor microenvironment" featured collaborative work by Drs. Beth Lawlor (Cancer Basic Biology; Seattle Children's) and Scott Furlan (Cancer Immunology; Fred Hutch).
  • "Odd cell out: detecting donor-derived macrophages in the brains of hematopoietic stem cell transplant recipients" featured collaborative work by Drs. Keith Loeb (Hematologic Malignancies; Fred Hutch), Siobhan Pattwell (Cancer Basic Biology; Seattle Children's), Soheil Meshinchi (Hematologic Malignancies; Fred Hutch), and Antonio Bedalov (Cancer Basic Biology; Fred Hutch).

CCSG Updates

Things are picking up! We're now just a few months away from our Competing Renewal submission deadline in January 2024. Here's what we're working on:
  • Selected narratives are undergoing an additional round of external revision based on recommendations from our External Advisory Board.
  • For those sections not undergoing additional revision, writers are working to integrate feedback and suggested edits from the External Advisory Board.
  • The Consortium Admin team is working with partners at Fred Hutch, UW, and Seattle Children's to collect and verify data for research programs, shared resources, and more.
 

UPCOMING EVENTS

» September 10-13, 2023: REDCap Conference 2023

The annual REDCap conference is a three-and-a-half-day event that offers educational and networking opportunities to REDCap administrators around the world. This year, ITHS is helping to host the event in Seattle.

The conference will be held at the Westin in Seattle (1900 5th Avenue, Seattle WA 98101) and is open to all REDCap Administrators. To learn more about the event or register to attend, click here.

» September 13 and 22, 2023: Washington Latina Health Symposium

Join the Office of Community Outreach & Engagement, Latinos Promoting Good Health, and Swedish Office of Health Equity, Diversity & Inclusion for the 2023 Latina Health Symposium, where public health professionals, clinicians, community health educators and social service professionals will learn new ways to engage/work with Hispanic/Latina/x women around health issues.

  • Wednesday, September 13, 2023, at Renton Technical College
  • Friday, September 22, 2023, at KDNA/NW Communities Education Center
This event is free; however. please note that advance registration is required. Click here to register.  

Questions? Email us at EndDisparities@fredhutch.org.  

» September 22, 2023: Microbiome and Cancer Symposium

The University of Minnesota will hold its third annual Microbiome and Cancer Symposium on September 22, 2023 from 7am-2pm Pacific. The symposium is free to attend in-person or virtually.

Click here to register to attend.

» September 25-26, 2023: PRIMeD at Fred Hutch

The Translational Data Science and Immunotherapy Integrated Research Centers (IRCs) will be hosting PRIMeD (Postdoc Recruitment in Immunology, Medicine, and Data Sciences) at Fred Hutch on September 25-26. We will have 18 graduate students participating. Candidates will visit Fred Hutch to explore our ongoing research in immuno-oncology and data sciences, share their own work, network with faculty and postdocs, and learn about postdoctoral training and other resources at Fred Hutch.  

Click here* or contact Becca Jourdan for details on the student presentations.   
*requires Fred Hutch credentials

» October 6, 2023: Translational Data Science IRC and Cancer Consortium Biostatistics & Computational Biology Program Retreat

The joint TDS IRC and Biostatistics & Computational Biology Program Retreat will be held Friday, October 6 from 9am-6pm at the Woodmark Hotel in Kirkland. Faculty, trainees and staff are all welcome! We are planning to have a showcase of data science at Fred Hutch, introduction to new data science faculty, as well as a trainee poster session and fast pitch competition. 

Click here to register. Please RSVP by September 8.

For more information, visit the retreat page on CenterNet* or contact Carlyn Fausto.
*requires Fred Hutch credentials
 

FROM THE OFFICE OF COMMUNITY OUTREACH & ENGAGEMENT

WA Comprehensive Cancer Control Plan Feedback Due 9/15/23!

On August 15th, we sent out an email to Cancer Consortium members asking for your feedback on the WA Comprehensive Cancer Control (CCC) Plan. The CCC Plan will act as a roadmap to help inform cancer control work to be done by health jurisdictions, community-based organizations, providers, health care systems, health insurers, policy makers, employers, or professional organizations.  

As we prepare to provide a coordinated cancer center response from the Cancer Consortium, we need your expertise and input on this important document! Please provide feedback via this form by Friday, September 15. Thanks in advance!

Note: all Consortium members received a copy of the draft CCC Plan by email on August 15. If you are unable to locate your copy or would like to request that it be re-sent to you, please contact cancerconsortium@fredhutch.org.
 

FROM THE OFFICE OF TRANSLATIONAL RESEARCH

Seattle Translational Tumor Research Celebrates 10 Years

In June of this summer, Seattle Translational Tumor Research (STTR) celebrated its 10-year anniversary with a Precision Medicine-themed retreat at the Museum of Flight. Over 140 members across the Cancer Consortium attended the day-long event, which featured an outstanding lineup of speakers highlighting key initiatives supporting precision oncology and research applications, including keynote addresses from the new Fred Hutch Chief Data Officer, Dr. Jeff Leek, and the new VP for Precision Oncology, Dr. Pete Nelson. The event was particularly special for the STTR team members to reflect back on the accomplishments and progress of the past decade, even as we spent the day looking forward.
Office of Translational Research (OTR) and Data Science Lab (DaSL) repping at Obliteride – with a cameo from baby Huggie!
The OTR found a creative way to share their in-office status using magnets of the team's faces. The OTR team can also use their floating head magnets to answer the week's poll!
 

FROM THE CONSORTIUM SHARED RESOURCES

New Technology, Methods, and Pricing in the Genomics & Bioinformatics (G&BSR) Shared Resource

G&BSR is pleased to announce new technologies and methods that we have added to our service offerings, and significant reagent discounts to support research at Fred Hutch!
We have obtained a 10x Genomics Chromium X, which supports all of the standard 10x Genomics single-cell RNA-sequencing assays while enabling high-throughput assays, doubling the number of individual cells that can be recovered from a single sample. Additionally, the Chromium X enables use of the Single Cell Gene Expression FLEX assay for use with paraformaldehyde-fixed or formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded sample types.
After successfully piloting the PacBio Multiplexed Arrays Sequencing (MAS-Seq) for the 10x Single Cell 3’ Kit workflow, we are introducing this assay as a standard service, including library preparation and sequencing. MAS-seq enables full-length RNA isoform sequencing and is compatible with the 10x Genomics Chromium Next GEM Single Cell 3ʹ Reagent Kits v3.1 for single-cell RNA-seq experiments. Coupled with sequencing on our PacBio Sequel IIe system, this is an end-to-end service. G&BSR also offers ISO-seq services for bulk profiling of RNA isoform diversity and will support new MAS applications as they become available.

G&BSR has obtained up to 30% reagent discounts through Illumina, which we will pass on directly to our user base. In some cases, these discounts will
enable us to provide sequencing services below the cost of reagents to a standard Illumina customer and allow us to maintain a fee structure that is highly competitive with commercial or other external vendors. G&BSR is proud to be able to provide the same high-quality services to the community at a reduced cost. Please contact the Genomics Resource for more details at genomics@fredhutch.org.
 

FROM CLINICAL RESEARCH SUPPORT

Promotion Announcement: Jenn Davies

We are pleased to announce that Jenn Davies has been promoted to Assistant Director of Regulatory Affairs. Jenn brings more than 20 years’ experience working in clinical research combined with leadership and dedication that has been demonstrated through her achievements as Senior Regulatory Affairs Associate.

Since joining CRS, Jenn has supported the Consortium in all things regulatory, including establishing best practices, communications, training, and FDA inspections. She’s worked on the development of numerous policies, CAPA plans, and training modules, as well as providing critical regulatory and operational support during COVID and the Fred Hutch/Seattle Cancer Care Alliance merger.
 

CONSORTIUM LEADER CLOSE UP: DR. CYRUS GHAJAR
This month's Consortium Leadership Spotlight features Dr. Cyrus Ghajar: tamer of metastases, lover of ice cream, and fan of the 49ers, first of his name.
How did you find your way to this career and research specialty?
I was a bioengineer by training, and then when I finished my undergraduate, I got my master’s in material science and I thought I’d go work in Silicon Valley. So I did that, and basically realized I hated working for people and being told what to do, and I didn’t really feel like I was helping anybody. I’d always been intimidated by the idea of getting a PhD, but finally I realized I didn’t like working for other people so much that I decided to go ahead and try it, because it couldn’t be worse than what I was doing at the time.

So I applied for PhD programs, and decided to go back into bioengineering. I knew I wanted to do research that would have some impact on human health. I was working on blood vessels and studying how endothelial cells, which are the cells that make up blood vessels, are impacted by the density of tissues that they reside in, and this had applications for tissue engineering. As I was doing that, I started sort of dabbling in cancer, because the prevalent idea at the time was that cancers depended on blood vessel growth in order to feed them. I liked working with cancer and the interaction between cancer and the endothelial cells so much that when I wrapped up my PhD, I wanted to make that the focus of what I was doing. But I wanted to not do it in a bioengineering lab, I wanted to do it in a tumor biology lab so that I could really learn developmental biology and tumor biology and become more of a cell biologist. I went and postdoc’ed with a woman named Mina Bissell, who’s very well known for her contributions to cancer research, to understanding development of the mammary gland – she was sort of somebody I idolized from very early on in my PhD, and I was really lucky to get the chance to work with her.

I went there to work on this whole aspect of angiogenesis, how tumors recruit blood vessels towards them, and after about a year of doing that, as I really learned the biology, I felt like I wasn’t going to be able to make a huge impact in that field – it was like an ocean already, so many people were working on it and anything I did was going to be like throwing a pebble in the ocean. Along with that, I was having some technical difficulties with the system I was trying to engineer to try to make some novel contribution to that research. I was telling all of this to Mina a year into my postdoc, and she looked at me and said, “So what? You’re young. You figured out what you don’t want to do, now go do something really important. You should think about tumor dormancy.” So we had a discussion over lunch, and I went home that weekend and started reading and devouring all the literature I could on dormancy and metastasis, and came up with this hypothesis that was kind of the flip side of what I had set out to do, which is that the endothelial cells – the blood vessels – actually regulate dormant cells when they’ve left an organ or wandered into a new one or are sitting there as single cells. That really started me on a trajectory of working on that problem from that point forward. I was fascinated by it. It was probably the first time I came up with a hypothesis without any data that was actually correct. I had a ball working on that the next three years in her lab, and then started my lab to work on that – and here we are today.
Is there anything particularly exciting going on in your research right now?
My lab is going to be ten years old in October, so over the last nine-plus years, we have worked to try to uncover the mysteries of how dormant cells avoid immunity and how they don’t respond to chemotherapy and why they’re kept asleep and what wakes them up – we’ve studied all these things, and we have really good ideas about what regulates all of those processes in preclinical models or the cell culture models that we use. But we’ve never really been able to actually determine whether or not our findings apply to humans, and the reason had been that the material that we would need is really rare. We’re not looking for pieces of a tumor, we’re not looking for pieces of a metastasis – we would need to ask a cancer patient to give us healthy tissue. So if you have a breast tumor and you’re having surgery, we would need a piece of healthy bone marrow to see if there are any breast tumor cells that have wandered into the bone marrow, and if so, then we need to study those cells and study their environment and the normal cells around them. I’ve tried to get that material from a bunch of different places and long story short, we couldn’t get it from other cancer centers – people just didn’t have this sort of repository. But working with other people within our Consortium, like Chris Li and the surgeons and medical oncologists and the immunologists like Stan Riddell, we were able to start a study from scratch and start acquiring these tissues.

We started realizing when we did how challenging it was to purify breast tumor cells that have wandered into the bone marrow and are one in a million in the bone marrow. We need to be able to enrich for those cells, and how do you do that? When we embarked on this, I think our ignorance was really a huge benefit to us because we didn’t realize how challenging it was going to be, so we were willing to do it. It’s taken some time, but I think now we’re at the point where we know what we’re doing. We’re purifying cells that we strongly believe are these dormant tumor cells from patients’ bone marrow, we’re getting really exciting profiles of these cells and trying to figure out what’s on their surface, and we’re able to test the hypothesis that we‘ve developed over the past few years in collaboration with Stan: that these cells are evading immunity precisely because they’re so rare, and the cells that are able to detect them, that have actually seen the primary tumor, are also rare when it comes to the bone marrow. So we’re going to try to define exactly how rare these interactions are in people, and determine whether or not the level of rarity dictates who has dormant cells in their marrow and who doesn’t, and who has cells that will wake up versus those who don’t. If that’s actually true, in parallel, we’re going to be able to profile what’s on the surface for these cells and then engineer immunity against it for the people who need it so that we can develop novel therapies to kill dormant cells and prevent metastasis – and only do so and only give these therapies to those who actually need it and spare those who don’t need additional treatment. That to me is super exciting and one of the new things that we’re doing.
What do you feel is the most essential quality for a leader to have?
Vision is the number one quality. I think you need to have a vision, the vision needs to be original, and then you need to be able to articulate why the vision is important and why it’s original, and you need to be able to get people on board with that vision. Leadership isn’t about telling people what to do, it’s about convincing people what the really cool and innovative thing to do would be. Like, “Here’s a really critical question, and if we’re able to make headway on it, here would be the impact, and you’re the right person to do this and here’s why you’re the right person. So let’s come up with an idea together.” So I think it’s about including the people who you’re working with and trying to help them understand they have a lot to contribute, you have a little bit to contribute, and if you put those things together you can solve some really big problems. I think one of the most important aspects of leadership is not ever feeling like you’re leading – you can’t really act that way, like, “I’m the leader of xyz, so because of that you need to listen to me.” That doesn’t really work form the standpoint of getting the best out of people. I think it’s a matter of really being able to articulate a vision and then getting people to buy into that vision and knowing what people are able to contribute and leveraging their skills and their abilities to contribute to making that thing happen.
What is something you know a lot about that’s not related to cancer research or your job?
I know a lot about sports, about NFL football, baseball, and basketball. I watch way too much of it, coach way too much of it, play way too much of it with my kids.

Do you have a favorite sports team?
No one’s going to like to hear this, but – I’m a huge 49ers fan. I’d say they‘re my absolute favorite team, and for number two it would be a tie between the Warriors and the Giants.

What is your favorite guilty pleasure food?
Ice cream for sure. I just love ice cream.

Do you have a favorite flavor or spot in Seattle?
My favorite spot in the world is in Marin County in the Bay Area – it’s this place called the Fairfax Scoop. The reason I like it so much is because they actually make the ice cream fresh there every day, it’s not super creamy – it’s a little bit lighter – and they have some really interesting flavors. My favorite generic flavor is mint chocolate chip, probably. But they have some really nice flavors with things like lavender and honey and vanilla. But it’s not super creamy like Molly Moon is. I haven’t found anything like that around here. The places here tend to make creamier ice cream, and I haven’t found anything on the lighter side that I really like. But there is Whidbey Island Ice Cream Company, and their popsicles are really really good.
What is the coolest thing you’ve ever done?
That’s a hard one, but I’ll say something more on-brand. One of the coolest opportunities I’ve ever had is being able to move up here and start my lab – for us, leaving the Bay Area, it was a big leap of faith. So finding ourselves here ten years later and being really happy personally, but also being thrilled professionally to have been at the Hutch, to have started my lab, to have done all the things we’ve done – that’s been really really cool. It’s super fun to just walk in every day and have the opportunity to discover something brand new or have someone in my lab come to me and say, “Hey, look what I think I see under the microscope” and show me – that joy of discovery and the opportunity to have that happen on any given day, and have these wonderful people that I’m working with in my lab, that’s been the coolest thing. 
 
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https://www.cancerconsortium.org/

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