October 7, 2015
October 7, 2015 —
University of California, San Diego School of Medicine’s Rob Knight, PhD, and his team built a microbiome analysis platform called QIIME (pronounced “chime” and short for “Quantitative Insights Into Microbial Ecology”). This software will now be more readily accessible to hundreds of thousands of researchers around the world through BaseSpace, a cloud-based app store offered by Illumina, a San Diego-based company that develops life science tools for the analysis of genetic variation.
October 5, 2015
October 5, 2015 —
Under its new 4D Nucleome Program, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Common Fund has awarded three grants totaling more than $30 million over five years to multidisciplinary teams of researchers at University of California, San Diego.
September 22, 2015
September 22, 2015 —
In 2014, only 10 of the nation’s 132 pharmacy schools achieved a 100 percent pass rate on first-time attempts at the North American Pharmacist Licensure Examination (NAPLEX). The University of California, San Diego Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences was one of them, passing all 54 students who took the exam for the first time.
August 13, 2015
August 13, 2015 —
Protein Kinase C is a family of enzymes that controls the activity of other proteins in a cell by attaching chemical tags. That simple act helps determine cell survival or death. When it goes awry, a number of diseases may result. In a study, researchers at University of California, San Diego School of Medicine reveal a more accurate structure of PKC, providing new targets for fine-tuning the enzyme’s activity as needed to improve human health.
August 13, 2015
August 13, 2015 —
The mechanisms that allow the liver to repair and regenerate itself have long been a matter of debate. Now researchers at University of California, San Diego School of Medicine have discovered a population of liver cells that are better at regenerating liver tissue than ordinary liver cells, or hepatocytes. The study is the first to identify these so-called “hybrid hepatocytes,” and show that they are able to regenerate liver tissue without giving rise to cancer.
August 4, 2015
August 4, 2015 —
Researchers at University of California, San Diego School of Medicine report that more than one in four female sex workers in two Mexican cities on the U.S. border entered the sex trade younger than age 18; one in eight before their 16th birthday. These women were more than three times more likely to become infected with HIV than those who started sex work as adults.
August 3, 2015
August 3, 2015 —
Ethiopians have lived at high altitudes for thousands of years, providing a natural experiment for studying human adaptations to low oxygen, a condition known as hypoxia. One factor that may enable Ethiopians to tolerate high altitudes and hypoxia is the endothelin receptor type B (EDNRB) gene. Researchers at University of California, San Diego School of Medicine now find that mice with lower-than-normal levels of EDNRB protein are remarkably tolerant to hypoxia.
July 27, 2015
July 27, 2015 —
The National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), has awarded James McKerrow, MD, PhD, dean of the University of California, San Diego Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, with a 2015 New Therapeutic Uses Award.
July 13, 2015
July 13, 2015 —
Tumors can leverage glucose and other nutrients to resist targeted therapies directed at specific cellular molecules, according to researchers at University of California, San Diego School of Medicine and Ludwig Cancer Research. In the study, published this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the team used human tissue and mouse models to demonstrate that nutrients can strongly affect the signaling molecules that drive tumors in glioblastoma, a deadly brain cancer.
July 8, 2015
July 8, 2015 —
Researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine and Moores Cancer Center are working with GSK on a bench-to-bedside project to treat leukemia and other diseases by eliminating cancer stem cells. The collaboration is part of GSK’s Discovery Partnerships with Academia (DPAc) program, where academic partners become core members of drug-hunting teams. Catriona Jamieson, MD, PhD, associate professor of medicine and chief of the Division of Regenerative Medicine, will lead UC San Diego’s effort in the new DPAc team.
