Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center is an international leader in cancer care and research. So it's sometimes puzzling to visitors when they see our hallways lined with images of yeast, fruit flies and worms. Yet basic research on these simple creatures, seemingly unrelated to ourselves, has afforded enormous advances in our understanding of the human body and the development of cancer and many other diseases.
Nowhere is this principle more wonderfully illustrated than in the work of the Hutchinson Center's president and director, Dr. Lee Hartwell, recipient of the 2001 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine.
More than 30 years ago, Lee used yeast, a simple, single-celled organism, to study the processes that govern how cells divide. Remarkably, what he discovered in yeast holds true for every more complex form of life in which cell division has been analyzed-a testament to the unity of life itself.
To read on, see From the Deputy Director.
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