Murry said he enjoys the open, collegial spirit at the UW. “I’m a pathologist interested in acquired diseases like heart attacks,” he said, “and I’ve found that seemingly separate disciplines can address a common project in very effective ways. We’re collaborating, for example, with Dr. Steve Hauschka from the biochemistry department. He is a developmental biologist who studies how skeletal and cardiac muscle develop from undifferentiated stem cells. His expertise in development has contributed substantially to our use of skeletal muscle, cardiac muscle, and stem cells to repair damaged hearts.

“We’re collaborating in another way with Dr. Tony Blau, a hematologist who is interested in ways to repopulate bone marrow after a bone marrow transplant. As it happens, that work has led to promising applications in repopulating the heart with muscle cells after a heart attack. Collaborations like these can substantially increase the rate of discovery and invention.”