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Hundreds of Undergraduates to Speak at UC San Diego’s Summer Research Conference Aug. 18

Her dream is to become a pediatrician and be the first in her family to graduate from college. Mandy Che, a senior at the University of California San Diego, is inspired by her parents who journeyed from Vietnam to San Francisco as refugees with no money and little English. She has learned to embrace all opportunities—like conducting faculty-mentored research over the summer at UC San Diego. On Aug. 18, she will present her findings along with 378 other undergraduates at the Summer Research Conference, the largest regional undergraduate research conference in San Diego County.

Qualcomm Institute’s CARI Therapeutics Awarded NIH Grant for Opioid Sensor

QI Innovation Space member CARI Therapeutics has received a grant from the National Institutes of Health to collaboratively develop a biosensor that will detect the presence of opioids in patients in recovery.

Novel Stem Cell-Derived Model Created of Inflammatory Neurological Disorder

An international team of scientists, led by University of California San Diego School of Medicine researchers, has created a human stem cell-based model of a rare, but devastating, inherited neurological autoimmune condition called Aicardi-Goutieres Syndrome (AGS). In doing so, the team was able to identify unusual and surprising underlying genetic mechanisms that drive AGS and test strategies to inhibit the condition using existing drugs.

Organoids are clusters of cultured cells self-organized into miniature replicas of organs

Scientists Find New Way to Map Differences in the Brain

A team from the UC San Diego Department of Cognitive Science and the Salk Institute for Biological Studies has, for the first time, profiled chemical modifications in the DNA of individual neurons, giving the most detailed information yet on what makes one brain cell different from its neighbor. The novel approach enabled the team to sort neurons into subtypes and create new kinds of brain maps. The study also identifies new subtypes of neurons.

New Version of DNA Editing System Corrects Underlying Defects in RNA-based Diseases

Until recently, CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing could only be used to manipulate DNA. In 2016, University of California San Diego School of Medicine researchers repurposed the technique to track RNA in live cells in a method called RNA-targeting Cas9. In a study published August 10 in Cell, the team took RCas9 a step further: they corrected molecular mistakes that lead to microsatellite repeat expansion diseases, which include a type of ALS and Huntington's disease.

2017 Massry Prize Honors Microbiome Research Pioneers

Microbiome researchers Rob Knight, PhD, University of California San Diego, Jeffrey Gordon, MD, Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, and Norman Pace, PhD, University of Colorado Boulder, will share this year’s Massry Prize, splitting the $200,000 honorarium. These researchers lead a field that works to produce a detailed understanding of microbiomes and methods for manipulating them for the benefit of human and environmental health.