March 2013

Since 2009, student leaders nationwide have been participating in the National Cesar E. Chavez Blood Drive Challenge to promote civic engagement in honor of the Latino American civil rights activist. Campus-wide blood drives are organized at colleges and universities, with about 250 participating this year; an impressive number considering its recent establishment. This health service learning event as it’s called, “integrates meaningful community service with instruction and reflection. The community benefits while students learn civic responsibility, leadership, and teamwork.”

Topic of Discussion
We are living in the genome age, where the productivity of DNA sequencers is advancing faster than Moore's Law. Dr. Quake will describe one contribution of biophysics to this field - the development of the first single molecule DNA sequencer. He will then go on to discuss several applications of high throughput DNA sequencing in medicine, ranging from non-invasive diagnostics to the first clinically annotated human genome.

About Dr. Quake
Stephen (Steve) Quake, PhD, is Professor of Bioengineering and Applied Physics at Stanford University. He pioneered the development of Microfluidic Large Scale Integration (LSI), demonstrating the first integrated microfluidic devices with thousands of mechanical valves. This technology is helping to pave the way for automation of biology at the nanoliter scale, and in recent years Quake and his collaborators have used it for applications as diverse as discovering a new drug for hepatitis C, mapping the genomes of environmental microbes, and measuring gene expression in individual cancer stem cells. Commercial versions of microfluidic LSI are now used in hundreds of laboratories around the world for diverse purposes.

Quake demonstrated the first successful single molecule DNA sequencing technology, which has been commercially developed and is a leading candidate to deliver the first $1,000 genome. In 2009 he and two coworkers sequenced his genome using the commercial version of the single molecule sequencing technology that he developed, an event that was widely reported in the popular press. He has received numerous awards from the NIH, MIT, Forbes, and Popular Science among others. He is a founder and scientific advisory board chair of Fluidigm, Inc. and Helicos Biosciences, Inc. (NASDAQ: HLCS).

He is the holder of more than 80 patents, has founded at least four companies based on his conceptions, and has invented technologies that have transformed science and medicine in fields ranging from genomic sequencing and microfluidics to infectious disease and medical diagnostics.

Please take a moment to read this article, written about Dr. Quake after receiving a $500,000 research prize.

Certain patients receiving blood transfusions require specific compatibility testing beyond the ABO type and Rh factor that we commonly hear about, (A+, A-, B+, etc.). This is typically the case with those who have been transfused many times, such as sickle-cell anemia patients.

When a hospital’s transfusion services department can’t find compatible blood for a patient, they send a sample of the blood to a blood bank reference lab. These labs have many tests they use to help identify the antibodies that are causing the incompatibility.

I was always terribly afraid of needles. But in the mid-1990s when my friend Evelyn was diagnosed with leukemia and needed apheresis donors, I went with a group of coworkers to the Welch Road facility to donate and be tested as a potential donor. Though I was not able to donate for her, I realized that my fear of needles was completely unfounded, and have been donating regularly ever since.

If there’s one thing we know about hockey fans, it’s that they aren’t generally squeamish about blood. That’s a great thing for Stanford Blood Center (SBC), who hosted its seventh annual “Save a Life” blood drive with the Sharks Foundation on Saturday, March 2. One of the most well-attended drives each year, dedicated Sharks fans combined to donate 261 units of blood. Some donors were lucky enough to be thanked personally for their donations by Sharks players Tommy Wingels, Matt Irwin, and Jason Demers.

The Sharks drive always brings out a combination of repeat donors and first-timers. This year, 74 donors registered with Stanford Blood Center for the first time! One hardcore fan at this drive is a regular SBC platelet donor at our center locations, but donated at the drive for the opportunity to watch the team’s morning skate.