The Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center has secured a five-year, $20 million research project from the National Institutes of Health to study a method in which a patient’s T-cells can be modified to prevent HIV infections. The Hutch’s Keith Jerome and Hans-Peter Kiem are the lead investigators on the grant, and they are collaborating with scientists at Richmond, CA-based Sangamo Biosciences (NASDAQ: [[ticker:SGMO]]), the University of Washington, Beckman Research Institute at City of Hope in Duarte, CA, and Seattle Children’s Hospital. The approach seeks to eliminate a protein on immune cells, called CCR5, which the HIV virus uses as a gateway to infect and damage the immune system.
Author: Luke Timmerman
Luke is an award-winning journalist specializing in life sciences. He has served as national biotechnology editor for Xconomy and national biotechnology reporter for Bloomberg News. Luke got started covering life sciences at The Seattle Times, where he was the lead reporter on an investigation of doctors who leaked confidential information about clinical trials to investors. The story won the Scripps Howard National Journalism Award and several other national prizes. Luke holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and during the 2005-2006 academic year, he was a Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT.
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