It is rare for an “orphan” disease (typically a condition that affects fewer than 200,000 people nationwide) to have a specific center dedicated to providing treatment and research. And it is even more unusual for big pharmaceutical companies to invest in an endowment to fund this type of center. Fortunately, the US Hereditary Angioedema Association (HAEA), a nonprofit patient advocacy organization, along with four pharmaceutical companies—Shire Human Genetics Therapies Inc., ViroPharma Incorporated (which merged with Shire), Dyax Corp. and CSL Bering—pledged a total of $4.6 million to help make the US HAEA Angioedema Center at UC San Diego Health System a reality. A number of individuals, including those with the disease, also provided private support.
A longtime member of the UC San Diego community – first as a graduate student, then as a faculty member and, most recently, as an administrator too – Carol Padden is a MacArthur “Genius” Award-winning scholar of sign languages. She was named the division’s fourth dean in June 2014, after an extensive national search. Her appointment began Oct. 1.
New findings by researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine open the door to the development of new therapies to block or decrease cognitive decline due to HIV-associated neurocognitive disorders (HAND), estimated to affect 10 to 50 percent of aging HIV sufferers to some degree.
Seeking to boldly go where medical science has not gone before, the Clinical and Translational Research Institute (CTRI) at the University of California, San Diego has been named the official testing site for the $10 million Qualcomm Tricorder XPRIZE, a global competition sponsored by the Qualcomm Foundation to develop a consumer-friendly, mobile device capable of diagnosing and interpreting 15 physiological conditions and capturing vital health metrics.
The governing board of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) has awarded two University of California, San Diego researchers almost $3 million in combined funding to pursue new technologies intended to accelerate advances moving stem cell therapies out of the lab and into the clinic.
Officials of the University of California, San Diego and Perdana University in Malaysia have announced a plan to collaborate on further development of the Perdana University Graduate School of Medicine (PUGSOM). UC San Diego was chosen from among the top schools of medicine in the United States to lead this initiative.
