ISB Waves Goodbye

(Full disclosure:  the author of this post is proud to be a member of ISB’s administrative team.  The ‘royal we’ in this post may be taken literally.)

The Institute for Systems Biology (also knows as “the biology place,” or “ISB”) is an internationally renowned non-profit research institute dedicated to the study and application of systems biology, and to the development of “P4 Medicine.”  P4 Medicine is a proactive healthcare model that is Predictive, Preventative, Personalized, and Participatory – and may well replace the current “sickness industry” with a new “wellness industry.”

ISB has assembled some of the best scholars and scientists in the world: from biologists, mathematicians and engineers, to computer scientists and physicists, in an interactive and collaborative environment — right here in lower Wallingford from 2002 until… last month.

ISB outgrew the Wallingford lab space a while back.  Some employees had been working at the lab on N. 34th Street, across from Essential Baking, while others worked in Fremont for the past two years.  Now all 330 of us are under one roof again.  But the new building is in South Lake Union.  The new space is located on Terry Ave N., near several of ISB’s research partners, including Seattle BioMed, UW Medicine, PATH, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Seattle Children’s Hospital, Novo Nordisk, VLST and SightLife.  The close proximity to collaborating institutions will allow ISB to work more effectively and efficiently with these world class institutions.  For more detail, see the press release here.

ISB accomplished a lot here in Wallingford, and we’re grateful to the neighborhood for hosting us.  Here are just a few of ISB’s many accomplishments during what I’m going to dub,  “the Wallingford era”:

• ISB and Swedish Neuroscience Institute engaged in a partnership to study brain tumors in order to develop advanced treatments that could improve diagnosis and treatment.
• ISB scientists identified multiple perturbed networks in prostate cancer.  This represents an important step forward in assessing an individual’s health status, which will be necessary in the emerging field of predictive and preventive medicine.
• Luxembourg tapped three of the US’ most prominent biomedical science leaders, including ISB,  for an unprecedented international collaboration to establish a bioscience center of excellence in the heart of the European Union, and to conduct genetic studies.
• ISB and Ohio State recently partnered up to start the P4 Medicine Institute.
• ISB is home to the Center for Inquiry Science, whose mission is to enable educators to produce scientifically literate students.  KTCS 9 awarded the 2010 Golden Apple award to the Center for Inquiry Science for their educational efforts in Washington State.
• ISB co-founder Lee Hood was awarded the 2010 Kistler Prize for creating the technical foundation of genomic sciences, and the National Academy of Engineering’s 2011 Russ Prize.
• ISB completed the first whole genome sequencing of an entire family (of four) and identified the gene responsible for Miller’s Syndrome.

And much, much more.

Thanks Wallingford, for being such a welcoming home to the Institute all these years!  We’re gonna miss the ‘hood… well, those of us who don’t already call Wallingford home, that is!

For more information about ISB, visit http://www.systemsbiology.org.