Gold Award Winner: Jay Shendure, M.D., Ph.D., UW School of Medicine & Brotman Baty Institute for Precision Medicine, Seattle
Dr. Jay Shendure is leading Seattle to the forefront of precision medicine to treat and prevent cancer and other serious medical conditions.
Shendure is a professor of genome sciences at the University of Washington and the scientific program director for the Brotman Baty Institute for Precision Medicine. At UW, he heads one of the world’s top laboratories for the testing of new DNA sequencing technologies to measure cancer and birth mutations and other mechanisms that underlie common diseases.
At Brotman Baty, Shendure leads a team of scientists working on new solutions to challenging medical problems, including cancer, infectious diseases, kidney diseases and autism. The center was created to enhance collaboration among scientists and doctors at UW Medicine, Seattle Children’s and Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center.
Shendure’s efforts have accelerated genetic medicine and biomedical and biological research across the globe.
For example, his team found ways to sequence only the protein-coding regions of the genome. This advance made it easier to find genes and mutations for inherited, single-gene disorders, and it has been used to identify hundreds of disease-causing genetic mutations. It also discovered ways to do prenatal genetic diagnosis without sampling fluid from the womb, but instead by checking the pregnant mother’s blood and the father’s saliva.
Link to originally published article.
