Reposted by Veesler lab
The remarkable @jeremyahollis.bsky.social defended his PhD thesis on the evolutionary innovations and landscapes of integrin proteins from Melody Campbell & Malik labs today to a packed house @fredhutch.org @basicsci.fredhutch.org Jeremy is a force of nature & one of the kindest people I’ve ever met
![A lot of what NIH funds is basic science, which focuses on discoveries that might or might not result in practical applications. How can you describe the value of basic science to the public? To most people, it seems nebulous. It might take 30 years of research to pay off in a practical way.
Yes, it’s hard for people to understand the importance of basic science. I think the best way to deal with that is to talk about examples.
I’ll reflect on my experience with cystic fibrosis research. The effort to try to do something for that almost-uniformly fatal disease started as a basic science enterprise to try to discover the nature of the gene that is misspelled. That was a hard slog back in the 1980s. Nobody would have supported [research into it] except NIH.
That work by my University of Michigan lab, working with Lap-Chee Tsui at the Hospital for Sick Kids in Toronto, led to the discovery of the gene [and the mutation that causes the disease] in 1989. Then, a partnership of NIH-funded research, philanthropy from the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, and investments by biotech and pharma led to a therapeutic breakthrough.
Now, 30 years after the gene discovery, young people with cystic fibrosis are planning for retirement instead of an early funeral.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:7e6gdj33irtt6i7vc6hozfah/bafkreic6ydv2aqftxi3caocigytazotzicudx4uww37l2acn3misi6dkka)
