Today is the thirty year reunion of my medical school graduating class at UW. As an assistant clinical professor I was privileged to participate in the hooding ceremony of the "Class of 2010" followed by a tour of the new "state of the art" UW Medicine South Lake Union research facility. There I visited the stem cell lab where I witnessed "lab grown" myocardial (heart muscle) cells contracting in waves across a Petrie dish. In the not too distant future these will serve as the "building blocks" to restore the heart muscle of heart attack victims. Next we were treated to an explanation by one of the leaders in the new field of epigenitics who hopes to be able to find new biomarkers of disease and unravel disease mechanisms that up until now have remained a "black box" mystery. The new UW facility cannot but help but impress any visitor. Not only are they the "tip of the spear" of scientific investigation, following in the footsteps of their down the street neighbor "The Hutch," they are becoming one of only a few centers in the world to bring the research science to the bedside with their Translational Medicine programs. Makes me darn proud to call myself "a Dawg!"
