School of Medicine

The Latest

Studies: E-cigarettes Don’t Help Smokers Quit and They May Become Addicted to Vaping

Two UC San Diego School of Medicine-led analyses report that e-cigarettes are not effective in helping adults to quit smoking.

UC San Diego Joins Second Major National Clinical Trial for Novel Coronavirus

UC San Diego Health will be part of the Phase III national AstraZeneca clinical trial that will recruit up to 30,000 participants at multiple sites across the country to assess the safety and efficacy of a vaccine to prevent COVID-19.

National Science Foundation-funded CloudBank Now Operational

The San Diego Supercomputer Center at UC San Diego, the University of Washington, and UC Berkeley have entered production operations of the National Science Foundation-funded CloudBank program, which aims to simplify the use of public clouds across computer science research and education.

UC San Diego Health Offers New Treatment for Chronic Low Back Pain

UC San Diego Health is now offering a new minimally invasive approach to provide relief for patients suffering from chronic low back pain (CLBP). The new treatment is called “Intracept,” an outpatient procedure that targets nerves located in the vertebrae or bones of the spine.

Overlooked ‘Housekeeping’ Gene Plays Unexpected Role in Seizures

Molecules known as tRNAs are often overlooked in study of disease processes. Researchers have now found that a mutation in a tRNA gene called n-Tr20—expressed only in the brain—can disrupt the landscape of entire cells, leading to chain reactions that alter brain function and behavior.

Uncontrolled ‘cAMP’ Helps Spark Rare Liver Cancer

UC San Diego researchers engineered fluorescent tools that combine the gene editing technique CRISPR and biosensor technologies to look inside cells in a whole new way. Their findings show that a major protein that binds to the signaling molecule cAMP can form membraneless organelles in human cells.