'Transforming Healthcare' showcases the power of basic science through CU Anschutz world-class research
A star took center stage at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus on April 26, where the award-winning "guest" was presented by some of its greatest fans to a roomful of many new admirers.
RNA - and its acting director, messenger RNA (mRNA) - was the featured celebrity of the show in the new Donald M. Elliman Conference Center in the Anschutz Health Sciences Building. The 2022 premiere of "Transforming Healthcare" revealed "The Promise (and Proof) of RNA Research" through the lens of its most talented crewmembers.
What: "Transforming Healthcare: The Promise (and Proof) of RNA Research" Why: An educational community event honoring patients, friends and donors Special guest: RNA and its greatest fan club: The RNA Bioscience Initiative. RBI has nearly tripled in size since its launch in 2016, attracting star researchers and energizing RNA research in the area. Emcee: Peter Buttrick, MD, senior associate dean for academic affairs, who pointed out the most powerful letters in the "A, C, G, U" RNA alphabet are: CU. CU Anschutz Chancellor Donald Elliman welcomed the audience, which included donors. "We couldn't have done what we are doing today without supporters like you." CU School of Medicine Dean John J. Reilly Jr. also welcomed guests via video. Reilly's office funded RBI with $20 million in 2016, launching the university's own cutting-edge research hub. |
"I am excited to be able to introduce you this evening to one of the brightest stars in life's galaxy: the very talented, the very beautiful molecule of RNA," said David Bentley, PhD, co-founder and co-director of the University of Colorado School of Medicine RNA Bioscience Initiative (RBI).
"We at RBI are very lucky people," Bentley said of the campus hub for innovative RNA research since 2016. "We get to spend our time studying the biology of this marvelous molecule, whose abilities seem to never cease astounding us."
Bentley and his RBI colleagues, four of whom joined him in the lecture series' speaker lineup for the community research showcase, have focused their careers on unlocking the secret talents of RNA, or ribonucleic acid. Yet much of the world was recently awakened to the molecule's abilities, when a rapidly produced mRNA-based vaccine came to the rescue early in the COVID-19 pandemic.
'Operating not in the spotlight'
Like a star ballerina who outshines her partner, a spectacular example of translational research resulted in the breakthrough vaccines, Bentley said. But like a ballerina's partner, basic research provided the foundation for the molecule's stunning performance.
"That is the role of basic research, often operating not in the spotlight but serving an essential purpose and role in enabling important advances in medicine," Bentley said. Many of those advancements have happened at CU, Bentley said.
In 1989, CU Boulder researcher Tom Cech, PhD, along with CU alumnus and Yale Professor Sidney Altman, PhD, "rocked" the foundations of biochemistry with their Nobel prize-winning discovery that the molecule could catalyze chemical reactions, Bentley said. The "staggering achievement" informs the life-changing work of his "dream team" of RBI researchers on the CU Anschutz Medical Campus today, he said.
Painstaking, daunting but thrilling
"In order to meet the pandemics of the past and the global outbreaks of the future, we need to know more about these viruses," said Jeffrey Kieft, PhD, vice chair of biochemistry and molecular genetics and senior member of RBI. "One important way to learn about them is to study their RNA."
