Research Highlights

UW Medicine is an international leader in research to:

• Advance knowlege in the basic biomedical sciences
• Discover and test preventions and treatments for disease
• Improve physician education and assess physicians skills
• Provide data for public policy decisions
• Tap the potential of computing and informatics in medicine

UW Medicine scientists have earned Nobel Prizes in physiology or medicine for discovering:

• Cell transplantation in the treatment of human disease
  Dr. E. Donnall Thomas (1990)
• Reversible protein phosphoryiation as a biological regulatory mechanism
  Dr. Edwin Krebs and Dr. Edmond Fischer (1992)
• Key regulators of the cell cycle
  Dr. Leland H. Hartwell (2001)
• Discoveries of odorant receptors and the organization of the olfactory system Dr. Linda B. Buck (2004)

A few examples of UW discoveries that have changed the course of scientific and medical research:

• Long-term dialysis for kidney failure
• Treadmill test for the heart's response to exercise
• Quantitative angiographic techniques to measure heart pumping
• Details of certain mechanisms of abnormal cholesterol metabolism
• Elucidation of some of the steps in the formation of atherosclerosis
• The process by which white blood cells engulf and destroy bacteria
• On-the-scene heart attack studies leading to the formation of Medic One
• Effects of iron deficiency on body tissues
• Explanation of some of the mechanisms of blood clotting
• Cloning of genes for blood coagulation
• Development of techniques for gene transfer in transgenic animals
• Discovery of platelet-derived growth factor that stimulates cell proliferation
• Created the first research unit to study pain as a disease and developed approaches to chronic pain treatment
• Described the size, shape and functions of ion channels in cell signaling
• Defined fetal alcohol syndrome and characterized its physical, mental, and behavioral features
• Numerous advances in diagnosing and treating sexually transmitted diseases
• Design of analytical tools that made possible the Human Genome Project
• Use of yeast cells as tiny biochemical factories by designing a method to produce recombinant proteins inside yeast
• In vaccine studies, UW and University of California scientists created method to synthesize human virus antigens for hepatitis B in yeast
• Produced recombinant erythropoietin, a factor that stimulates red blood cell production.
• Creation of methods to analyze protein folding and structure, and the use of crystallography in protein molecular analysis
• Wrote computer programs and graphic editors, including PHRED, PHRAP, CROSSMATCH and SWAT, for analyzing DNA sequences and for use in genome and tree of life studies.
• Advanced the understanding of the molecular biology of muscle proteins in muscular dystrophy.