
Seattle’s Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center already has dozens of scientists working on infectious diseases, including COVID-19 — but the center’s president and director, Thomas Lynch, says the research community is going to have to kick things up a notch to head off future pandemics.
His prescription? Create institutions like Fred Hutch that are devoted to virology.
“I feel strongly about this,” Lynch, a veteran medical doctor and researcher who took on the Hutch’s top post less than four months ago, said today during an online conversation presented via Zoom for GeekWire members. “I think virology needs a ‘cancer centers’ program, OK?”