As a child, Dylan Burke was an athlete and\u00a0gymnast\u00a0who\u00a0shunned sugar and\u00a0worked out every day, and a budding mad scientist who was constantly inventing things. As a\u00a0patient,\u00a0he\u00a0grew\u00a0interested in neuropharmacology and the chemical basis for happiness, reading journal papers together with his father.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Dylan\u00a0was diagnosed\u00a0at age 9\u00a0with\u00a0myelodysplastic syndrome\u00a0(MDS)<\/a>,\u00a0a group of diseases characterized by\u00a0abnormal production of blood cells in bone marrow.\u00a0MDS commonly progresses to\u00a0leukemia<\/a>, and that was sadly Dylan\u2019s experience.\u00a0He\u00a0came to Fred Hutch Cancer Center\u00a0in 2019\u00a0for treatment\u00a0after his father, Dave Burke,\u00a0read a pediatric oncology textbook that included a chapter on MDS written by\u00a0Soheil Meshinchi,\u00a0MD, PhD<\/a>,\u00a0a hematologist\/oncologist and\u00a0professor in the\u00a0Translational Science and Therapeutics Division<\/a>\u00a0at Fred Hutch and a member of its Immunotherapy\u00a0Integrated Research Center<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cSoheil was largely the reason we chose Fred Hutch and Seattle Children\u2019s Hospital,\u201d said Burke, a Google advisor and chief technology officer at the Arc Institute<\/a>, a biomedical research organization in Palo Alto, Calif. \u201cHe\u2019s\u00a0a\u00a0really creative\u00a0scientist and clinician who\u00a0thinks outside the box\u00a0and is disruptive and makes things happen. He is persistent.\u00a0I have seen him fight not just for Dylan but for other children.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Meshinchi, a world leader in\u00a0developing novel approaches to treating\u00a0acute myeloid leukemia\u00a0(AML)<\/a>, has been named the\u00a0second\u00a0recipient of the\u00a0Dylan Burke Endowed Chair in Immunotherapy.\u00a0Fred Hutch immunologist Stan\u00a0Riddell,\u00a0MD,<\/a>\u00a0served at\u00a0the inaugural\u00a0holder\u00a0of the chair, which Burke and his wife, Louise O\u2019Reilly,\u00a0established\u00a0in 2020.\u00a0<\/p>\n