THE MAGIC MICROSCOPIC particles that might change the world — and in the process, permanently burnish Seattle’s spot on the big, ascent-of-man scientific map — are, at this very moment, being carted about on a medical campus one short traffic jam away from the shores of Lake Union. Their mode of transport: a thermo-molded plastic lunch cooler, of the sort one might nab at Walmart to carry a baloney sandwich and some freshly cured herring out for a day of salmon fishing on Puget Sound. The little coolers are ubiquitous at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, which four decades...