After 40 years at Fred Hutch Cancer Center asking good questions of his own science and the science of his colleagues, cell biologist Jonathan Cooper, PhD has retired from the Basic Sciences Division.
He made his name in biology by identifying key components of a complex relay system that enables cells to communicate with each other. He elucidated networks of proteins on the cell’s surface that transmit signals about the external environment through the cell membrane to coordinate internal functions such as replication and division. Those signaling pathways can cause cancer when they go awry.
Cooper made his name at Fred Hutch by exemplifying the egalitarian culture of the research division he directed from 2009 to 2018.
That culture values independent, individual labs run by principal investigators who work side by side with their trainees at the bench and regularly share what they’re up to with their colleagues, offering advice and spurring each other’s science with good questions.
Those values, held dear by Cooper and the directors who came before and after him, created a buzz that made Fred Hutch research distinct and attractive to scientists from all over the world.
“Jon epitomizes what is really cool and great about our division and Fred Hutch in general — just the sense that people areinterested in each other’s work and really care about what we do,” said Bob Eisenman, PhD, at Cooper’s recent retirement party.
Born and raised in England, Cooper received his undergraduate degree in natural sciences at Cambridge University in 1973 and a PhD in biological sciences at Warwick University in Coventry in 1976.
He began his career in the U.S. as a visiting fellow at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland.
“I hadn’t really been outside England before,” Cooper said. “It was really neat because I left England in the rain in the winter, and when I arrived there was snow on the ground in Washington D.C. and the sun was out.”
He chased the sun west to La Jolla, California in 1980 as a research associate at The Salk Institute, which is where he heard the buzz about the science happening at Fred Hutch.
“The Salk and Fred Hutch were both similar vintage institutions,” Cooper said. “And there were people at both institutions working on oncogenes and oncogenic viruses and there was actually an annual meeting where people from Salk and people from Fred Hutch would get together at one or the other institution.”
Rather than poach celebrity scientists from other institutions, Fred Hutch wanted to recruit entry-level faculty who would build their careers from the ground up in Seattle and Cooper fit the bill, adding to Fred Hutch’s growing expertise in cell signaling from the cell surface.
He started his lab in 1985 in Fred Hutch’s original First Hill building in Seattle. At the time, the floor was mostly vacant, but it began to fill with a burst of new hires as the Basic Sciences Division rapidly expanded over the next few years.
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“The floor gained energy over the years that I was there,” he said. “There was a lot going on. It was very exciting time. We didn't have faculty lunches, as I recall early on, but we did have Friday evening talks.”
They met in a small room on the 6th floor to just talk about science, which in retrospect seems to Cooper like a luxury given the current worries about funding.
“There were never enough chairs, so a lot of people would sit on the floor really close to the blackboard,” Cooper said.
Harold Weintraub, MD, PhD, and physician-scientist Paul Neiman, MD, helped shape the culture of Basic Sciences in those Friday evening talks, which eventually became the noon faculty lectures that continue today.
Cooper’s lab focused on how the Src family of proteins and related enzymes called tyrosine kinases regulate cell proliferation, migration and transformation in normal cells, which is key to understanding how those mechanisms can go wrong in cancer and other chronic diseases.
His discoveries included finding a mechanistic link between two human mutated genes with the potential to cause cancer, RAS and RAF, which helped elucidate how signals get relayed inside cells to spur runaway cell division.
That insight has contributed to the development of anticancer drugs that target RAF and RAS.
His later work focused on signaling pathways that regulate cell movement, for example in early fetal brain development when cells must migrate to a particular location in the brain and specialize. When those signals go awry, migratory cells might stop short of their destination or overshoot the mark.
While he pursued his own science, Cooper remained curious about what his colleagues were up to and gained a reputation for asking good questions at weekly faculty lectures, informed by an expansive knowledge of basic biology.
“He has a good question for everyone no matter what the talk is,” said Michael Emerman, PhD. “So many of us kind of stay in our lane. No matter what the talk is Jon has something really insightful to say about it.”
When Jim M. Roberts, MD, PhD, left Fred Hutch for an opportunity in the private sector in 2009 after directing Basic Sciences for just four years, the division suddenly needed new leadership.
Cooper was named to replace Roberts.
“Jon was a really obvious person to take over,” Emerman said. “He knew what everybody did. He was interested in what everybody did.”
Cooper had served as the associate division director, and he had also co-directed the Molecular and Cellular Biology Program between the University of Washington and Fred Hutch.
Like Neiman, the division’s first director, and Mark Groudine, MD, PhD, who led the division after Nieman, Cooper assured the researchers that he would clear whatever obstacles he could for them to pursue their work, treating each as equitably as possible.
“He was going to back you,” Emerman said. “Whatever you were interested in, that’s what he was interested in.”
At the same time, however, Cooper kept at his own work, continuing his experiments alongside his trainees rather than administering the lab from afar.
“Weintraub was in the lab. Groudine was in the lab. Jon Cooper definitely was in the lab,” Emerman said. “It doesn't happen in most places.”
In 2019, Cooper passed the torch to the current director, Sue Biggins, PhD.
He was her host when she first interviewed for a position at Fred Hutch.
“My first impression is exactly the same as my last impression, which is that he's extremely, extremely smart and gets to the heart of the matter very quickly,” she said. “I remember on my interview he would ask very probing questions. If you've been around him at all, that's never changed. He's maintained his rigor and his curiosity throughout his career.”
She learned the director’s job as Cooper’s associate director.
“He taught me everything about interacting with faculty and the administration and how to make decisions,” she said. “The division has really kept its core values and Jon was really integral to that as both director and as a colleague.”
Cooper continued to support her behind the scenes and continued to support his colleagues and keep the Basic Sciences buzz, well, buzzing.
Biggins joked at his retirement party that Cooper left the director’s office just before the pandemic and was leaving the active faculty now just as stable federal funding for biomedical research can no longer be taken for granted.
“Has any faculty member ever, ever had better timing?” she asked.
Cooper ran Basic Sciences with a British sensibility for financial restraint and making do with perfectly serviceable equipment despite its age.
That sensibility also prevented him from making gushing recommendations on behalf of the students and postdoctoral researchers in his lab.
“He shared with me a worry that his trainees were at a disadvantage because of his British reserve, said Cecilia Moens, PhD, who holds the Raisbeck Endowed Chair for Basic Science. “He just could not bring himself to write these letters that American principal investigators write in support of their trainees: It’s just unbecoming to go that far.”
But she also recalled at his retirement party how Cooper’s quiet generosity belied the appearance of reserve.
As his own lab was getting smaller, he spent some of his budget on a new microscope that he would use occasionally, knowing her lab would use it much more often.
“Our lab needed that microscope so much,” she said. “Jon has made it possible for us to do our work.”
Now as an emeritus professor and director, Cooper plans to continue editing the scientific journal eLife and dropping in on Friday lectures with a few good questions.
But he’s also looking forward to spending more time at the boathouse, rowing with an adult crew team.
Like the famous University of Washington crew team featured in the book and movie “The Boys in the Boat?”
“Geriatrics in the boat,” he quipped with a smile.
John Higgins, a staff writer at Fred Hutch Cancer Center, was an education reporter at The Seattle Times and the Akron Beacon Journal. He was a Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT, where he studied the emerging science of teaching. Reach him at jhiggin2@fredhutch.org or @jhigginswriter.bsky.social.
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Are you interested in reprinting or republishing this story? Be our guest! We want to help connect people with the information they need. We just ask that you link back to the original article, preserve the author’s byline and refrain from making edits that alter the original context. Questions? Email us at communications@fredhutch.org
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