Page 14 - 2017-2018 ARCS Oregon Annual Report

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Tyler Hulett, PhD Immuno-Oncology
ARCS Named Scholar
given by: Carol Ehlen &
The James R. Kuse Family Foundation
Why did you become interested in this field?
In undergrad, I had a superb mentor—Dr. Norb Weich—who had founded a small company and got a drug FDA approved for a rare disease called Urea Cycle Disorder. It was really inspiring to be able to see that one person with the right initiative could save people’s lives. I wanted to be able to do that too, and Norb told me that I needed a PhD first! While interviewing at OHSU, I was looking to join a team that knew how to do the full circle of development— from idea, to clinical trial, to business.
Somewhat by chance, I had spent the summer before coming here in an immunology lab, and ran into my current group at Providence. I was excited by the way Dr. Fox, Dr. Urba, and the team at Providence knew how to actually get their science ideas into clinical trials. I became a tumor immunologist because this group of people knew how to do the whole ‘bench to bedside’ process I was looking to learn. The basic scientists here at Providence regularly work with oncologists and surgeons—it’s very integrated.
I joined for all that, and then became sold on the science later.
How is the research you are working on going to help others?
My work has been very focused on something called ‘antigen-specific immune monitoring’—a mouthful of a term that is focused on trying to understand, at the smallest molecular level, why the adaptive immune system recognizes what it does. This is extremely important because we know the immune system can cure cancer—we just don’t know why. I’m interested in, and have been involved with, big screening projects trying to tease out exactly what it is that the immune