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The Basic Sciences Division at Fred Hutch Cancer Center celebrated the announcement Wednesday that Steven Henikoff, PhD, has won a prestigious award from Brandeis University recognizing his “innovative and transformative studies” on gene expression.
How prestigious?
Since it was first awarded in 1971, about a third of the recipients have gone on to win the Nobel Prize, including two of Fred Hutch’s three Nobel laureates — Linda Buck, PhD, and former president and director of Fred Hutch, Lee Hartwell, PhD.
E. Donnall Thomas, MD, director emeritus of Fred Hutch's Clinical Research Division, received the Nobel in 1990 for his pioneering work in bone marrow transplantation.
The Rosenstiel Award recognizes “recent discoveries of particular originality and importance to basic medical research,” according to Brandeis and is given based on the recommendation of a panel of Boston-area scientists.
This year’s award recognizes Henikoff’s “work on genome organization and detailed mapping of the landscape of proteins that are bound to DNA,” according to Brandeis.
Studying mammals, fruit flies, worms, yeast and plants, Henikoff’s lab has developed precise methods to study how DNA is packaged with proteins and how changes in this packaging affect where and when regulatory proteins bind to DNA.
Recently, Henikoff modified one of his innovative sequencing techniques in a collaboration with Eric Holland, MD, PhD, who heads the Human Biology Division at Fred Hutch and holds the Endowed Chair in Cancer Biology. They are using this method to reveal previously inaccessible molecular information from paraffin-embedded tumor samples, which has opened avenues for better cancer diagnosis and potential new therapies.
The award, created to highlight the role that educational institutions play in applying foundational research to medicine, “really tells us something about basic science at the Hutch,” Henikoff told his colleagues at the celebration.
He said a culture that values independent, individual labs run by principal investigators who work side by side with their trainees at the bench and collaborate with one another already was evident when Henikoff joined Fred Hutch in 1981.
“That kind of science was kind of unusual at the time,” Henikoff said. “It’s amazing to me we can still do that even today — small-lab science. It’s really what the Basic Sciences Division has been all along.”
A cash prize and a medallion accompany each award, which Dr. Henikoff will receive at Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts on April 15, where he also will give a lecture about his work.
