October 7, 2020
Dr. Dan Stetson, Associate Professor receives NIH High-Risk, High Reward Grant
Immunology Associate Professor Dr. Dan Stetson one of four faculty members at the UW SoM to receive 2020 High-Risk, High Reward research grants from the National Institutes of Health. (10/6/2020)
Daniel B. Stetson, PhD, associate professor of immunology, will be part of a multi-institutional Transformative Research Award. The group of scientists will uncover innate immune system checkpoints that keep the body from attacking its own cells. Such checkpoints do make exceptions and permit the death of cells that become cancerous. It would be easy during a viral infection to confuse whether two-stranded RNA comes from a virus or from one’s own cells. That is why animals and humans have a biochemical tag to mark their cells’ two-stranded RNA. This helps avoid immune response mistakes. Learning more about how the immune system guards the body from its own defensive arsenal may help researchers identify new strategies for cancer that overcome immune system roadblocks to treatment. Brenda Bass from the University of Utah will head this collaborative project. Visit the Stetson lab website.
The NIH research grant numbers are: DP1 AI158186-01 (Veesler), DP2 ES032761-01 (Sancak), DP5 OD029630-01 (Stergachis), R01 CA260414-01 (Stetson, Basa, and others). The program is supported by the NIH Common Fund.