Tax contributions fight breast cancer.

Supporting cancer research is easy, especially if you’re about to complete your California tax form.

Simply check box number 405 (California Breast Cancer Research Fund) and/or box number 413 (California Cancer Research Fund).

Both funds are administered by the University of California Office of the President. Even small donations are welcome and can make a large impact in cancer research. Ninety-five percent of contributions to those two programs via the tax check-off go directly to cancer research or community-based education.

Tax-deductible donations from box/code 405 of the tax form go to the California Breast Cancer Research Program. In recent years, those donations have supported critical research including:

• Identifying environmental factors that potentially cause breast cancer.
• Developing targeted therapies to block breast cancer from spreading to other organs.
• Improving support networks to empower patients as they maneuver the health care system
• Addressing the needs of underserved families.

Donations from box/code 413 of the tax form go to the California Cancer Research Fund, which is helping to providing prevention and awareness programs in communities disproportionately affected by cancer. A major research grant is increasing the understanding of the impact of tobacco use and cancer on vulnerable populations. The research could lead to increased tobacco control and cancer awareness and prevention programs.

Historian of science Elizabeth Watkins will start in her new role April 1.

Elizabeth Watkins, UC San Francisco

UC San Francisco has named Elizabeth Watkins, an eclectic, prolific and versatile historian of science, as the dean of the Graduate Division, effective April 1.

Watkins, Ph.D., is director of graduate studies for the History of Health Sciences program, which she and her colleagues reopened after she arrived at UCSF in 2004, and a professor in the Department of Anthropology, History and Social Medicine.

“Her experience in working with researchers across multiple disciplines and in communicating with a diverse range of audiences will be invaluable in her capacity to lead our Graduate Division with its broad set of stakeholders,” said Jeffrey Bluestone, Ph.D., executive vice chancellor and provost at UCSF.

The Graduate Division offers top-ranked programs in the biological, biomedical, pharmaceutical, nursing, and social and behavioral sciences. UCSF graduate students may conduct research in basic, clinical, social, and behavioral sciences. Their work ultimately will help to ensure the health of humans, shape health care systems and influence public education about the prevention of disease. Competition is intense for acceptance into the Graduate Division, which admits 125 students from among 1,800 applicants.

The position as dean, vacated when Patricia Calarco, Ph.D., retired on Oct. 1 after a productive 40-year career at UCSF, has been filled in the interim by Joseph Castro, Ph.D., UCSF vice chancellor for student academic affairs.

“What appeals to me about this new job is being involved in something larger,” said Watkins, 49. “I’m passionate about education, especially graduate education.”

She is equally fervid about the subject of history.

“We need to know where we came from,” Watkins said. “Historians offer a unique perspective, which is particularly important for health policy so that decisions aren’t made just in terms of what has happened in the last few years. We need to understand how we got to where we are.”

People she meets outside the university are surprised to learn that history is taught at UCSF.

“Once I engage them in conversation, they become fascinated,” Watkins said. “It’s an easy sell. I see that as one of my challenges and goals: to raise the profile of all the graduate programs, both on campus and in the wider community. Research is really driven by our graduate students. They cross-pollinate between different labs, and their work will eventually give us the next generation of innovations.”

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UC Davis pursues a transformational opportunity to improve health.

Guadalupe and Leonor Villarreal sought the expertise of a team of specialists at the UC Davis Alzheimer’s Disease Center when Guadalupe Villarreal began forgetting facts of his life as a farmer.

Nestled among the orchards surrounding Hughson is the farm that has been home to Guadalupe Villarreal and his family for 40 years. He and his wife, Leonor, raised their three children there amid tidy rows of peach and almond trees.

Running the farm kept Guadalupe Villarreal more than busy. There was always something to prune, to plant, to irrigate or to harvest. But during the summer of 2007, he began forgetting the facts of his life. He no longer could remember where the road past his house led, grew frustrated looking for his closet and dresser, and kept asking after his long-deceased mother.

Worried, Leonor Villarreal took him to the family’s doctor, and ultimately to the UC Davis Alzheimer’s Disease Center. There, a team of clinicians evaluated his overall health, studied scans of his brain and tested his memory. After ruling out other conditions, the doctors diagnosed him at age 73 with early-stage Alzheimer’s disease.

“At first we were all in denial,” says Leonor Villarreal, his wife of 57 years, “because I could not accept that would be him.”

But the UC Davis center was able to offer the Villarreals guidance on how to deal with the diagnosis. Doctors recommended two medications to slow the progression of the disease, and coordinated Guadalupe Villarreal’s care with the family’s physician. With a diagnosis in hand, the Villarreal family could help keep the patriarch safe.

“The kids don’t let him get on the tractor,” Leonor Villarreal says. “He doesn’t drive into town anymore. I write down on the calendar what he’s done, when he’s fed the dogs or taken his medication.”

The UC Davis Alzheimer’s Disease Center is dedicated to investigating the causes of dementia and mental aging. Led by director and professor of neurology Charles DeCarli, the center follows more than 500 research subjects such as Guadalupe Villarreal, and evaluates more than 200 patients each year. The center has received continuous grant funding from the National Institute on Aging since 1991, the most recent in 2011 with a five-year grant of $6.9 million. For his work at the center using imaging technology to link vascular functioning in the brain with the structural changes seen in Alzheimer’s and dementia, DeCarli was awarded the J. Allyn Taylor International Prize in Medicine in October 2010.

Through the Alzheimer’s Disease Center and other centers of excellence, UC Davis Health System works to bring the most recent scientific and technological developments in neuroscience to patients. Among other centers of investigation are the Center for Neuroscience, which performs basic research on all aspects of the brain and nervous system; the Center for Mind and Brain, which studies memory formation and other building blocks of cognitive function; the Imaging Research Center, which improves ways to visualize the structure and chemistry of the working brain; and the Center for Visual Sciences, which explores the genetic, molecular and neurological mechanisms that enable the body’s keenest sense.

These partnerships among UC Davis physicians and other researchers from many disciplines are greater than the sum of their parts. Together, these researchers are gaining a detailed understanding of brain health and ensuring that patients across California have access to the first-rate neuroscience services they need. This fundamental strength is the key reason neuroscience is one of the four focus areas in UC Davis Health System’s 2011– 2016 Strategic Plan.

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First-ever feat provides new method to understand cause of disease, develop drugs.

Led by researchers at the University of California, San Diego, School of Medicine, scientists have for the first time created stem cell-derived, in vitro models of sporadic and hereditary Alzheimer’s disease, using induced pluripotent stem cells from patients with the much-dreaded neurodegenerative disorder.

“Creating highly purified and functional human Alzheimer’s neurons in a dish — this has never been done before,” said senior study author Lawrence Goldstein, professor in the Department of Cellular and Molecular Medicine, Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator and director of the UC San Diego Stem Cell Program. “It’s a first step. These aren’t perfect models. They’re proof of concept. But now we know how to make them. It requires extraordinary care and diligence, really rigorous quality controls to induce consistent behavior, but we can do it.”

The feat, published in today’s (Jan. 25) online edition of the journal Nature, represents a new and much-needed method for studying the causes of Alzheimer’s disease, a progressive dementia that afflicts approximately 5.4 million Americans. More importantly, the living cells provide an unprecedented tool for developing and testing drugs to treat the disorder.

“We’re dealing with the human brain. You can’t just do a biopsy on living patients,” said Goldstein. “Instead, researchers have had to work around, mimicking some aspects of the disease in non-neuronal human cells or using limited animal models. Neither approach is really satisfactory.”

Goldstein and colleagues extracted primary fibroblasts from skin tissues taken from two patients with familial Alzeheimer’s (a rare, early-onset form of the disease associated with a genetic predisposition), two patients with sporadic Alzheimer’s (the common form, the cause of which is not known) and two persons with no known neurological problems. They reprogrammed the fibroblasts into induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) that then differentiated into working neurons.

The iPSC-derived neurons from the Alzheimer’s patients exhibited normal electrophysiological activity, formed functional synaptic contacts and, critically, displayed tell-tale indicators of the disease. Specifically, they possessed higher-than-normal levels of proteins associated with the disorder.

With the in vitro Alzheimer’s neurons, scientists can more deeply investigate how Alzheimer’s begins and chart the biochemical processes that eventually destroy brain cells associated with elemental cognitive functions like memory. Currently, Alzheimer’s research depends heavily upon studies of post-mortem tissues, long after the damage has been done.

“The differences between a healthy neuron and an Alzheimer’s neuron are subtle,” said Goldstein. “It basically comes down to low-level mischief accumulating over a very long time, with catastrophic results.”

The researchers already have produced some surprising findings. “In this work, we show that one of the early changes in Alzheimer’s neurons thought to be an initiating event in the course of the disease turns out not to be that significant,” Goldstein said, adding that they discovered a different early event plays a bigger role.

The scientists also found that neurons derived from one of the two patients with sporadic Alzheimer’s exhibited biochemical changes possibly linked to the disease. The discovery suggests that there may be sub-categories of the disorder and that, in the future, potential therapies might be targeted to specific groups of Alzheimer’s patients.

Though just a beginning, Goldstein emphasized the iPSC-derived Alzheimer’s neurons present a huge opportunity in a desperate fight. “At the end of the day, we need to use cells like these to better understand Alzheimer’s and find drugs to treat it. We need to do everything we can because the cost of this disease is just too heavy and horrible to contemplate. Without solutions, it will bankrupt us — emotionally and financially.”

Funding for this research came in part from the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, the Weatherstone Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, the Hartwell Foundation, the Lookout Fund and the McDonnell Foundation.

A patent application has been filed on this technology by the University of California, San Diego. For more information, visit http://techtransfer.universityofcalifornia.edu/NCD/22199.html.

Co-authors are Mason A. Israel and Sol M. Reyna, Howard Hughes Medical Institute and UC San Diego Department of Cellular and Molecular Medicine and UC San Diego Biomedical Sciences Graduate Program; Shauna H. Yuan, Howard Hughes Medical Institute and UC San Diego Department of Cellular and Molecular Medicine and UC San Diego Department of Neurosciences; Cedric Bardy and Yangling Mu, The Salk Institute for Biological Studies; Cheryl Herrera, Howard Hughes Medical Institute and UC San Diego Department of Cellular and Molecular Medicine; Michael P. Hefferan, UC San Diego Department of Anesthesiology; Sebastiaan Van Gorp, Department of Anesthesiology, Maastricht University Medical Center, Netherlands; Kristopher L. Nazor, Department of Chemical Physiology, Scripps Research Institute; Francesca S. Boscolo and Louise C. Laurent, UC San Diego Department of Reproductive Medicine; Christian T. Carson, BD Biosciences; Martin Marsala, UC San Diego Department of Anesthesiology and Institute of Neurobiology, Slovak Academy of Sciences, Slovakia; Fred H. Gage, Salk Institute of Biological Studies; Anne M. Remes, Department of Clinical Medicine, Neurology and Clinical Research Center, University of Oulu, Finland; and Edward H. Koo, UC San Diego Department of Neurosciences.

About Alzheimer’s disease
An estimated 5.4 million Americans have Alzheimer’s disease, according to the Alzheimer’s Association. Two-thirds are women. By 2050, as many as 16 million Americans are projected to have the disease. In 2011, the economic cost of caring for Alzheimer’s patients exceeded $183 billion, projected to rise to $1.1 trillion by 2050. Alzheimer’s is the sixth leading cause of death in the United States, killing more than 75,000 Americans annually. Currently there are no drugs to prevent, alter or cure the disease.

UCLA early findings may pave way for new therapy to treat eye diseases.

UCLA's Steven Schwartz performs stem cell transplant

Researchers at UCLA’s Jules Stein Eye Institute and colleagues who successfully transplanted specialized retinal cells derived from human embryonic stem cells into the eyes of two legally blind patients report that the transplants appear safe and that both patients have experienced modest improvement in their vision.

The preliminary findings, published online today (Jan. 23) in the journal The Lancet, represent a milestone in the therapeutic use of stem cells and may pave the way for a new therapy to treat eye diseases, the researchers said. Because this is the first time physicians have applied the power of regenerative medicine to eye disease, the clinical trials are being watched closely by scientists, stem-cell therapy advocates and the public.

The patients — a woman in her 50s with Stargardt’s macular dystrophy and a woman in her 70s with dry age-related macular degeneration — underwent outpatient transplantation surgeries last July, said principal investigator Dr. Steven Schwartz, chief of the retinal division at the Jules Stein Institute and the Ahmanson Professor of Ophthalmology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA.

Both patients received relatively low doses of stem cell–derived retinal pigment epithelial (RPE) cells, which were transplanted into the space under the retina. The patients then received low-dose immunosuppression therapy over a number of weeks. The researchers monitored the patients’ progress over four months and found no safety concerns, no signs of rejection and no abnormal cell growth.

In the Lancet, Schwartz and a team of doctors from UCLA and Advanced Cell Technology Inc., which manufactured the stem cells used in the surgery, report that standard vision tests suggested some improvement in the vision of both patients. The woman with Stargardt’s disease, for example, went from only being able to discern hand movements to seeing a single finger move, according to the Lancet article. On a visual acuity letter-chart, she went from being unable to read any letters prior to treatment to reading five letters.

The patient with macular degeneration also showed some improvement after the therapy. Where once she was only able to make out 21 letters on the chart, her reading level stabilized at 28 letters — after peaking at 33 letters just a couple of weeks after the transplantation.

“The ultimate therapeutic goal will be to treat patients earlier in the disease processes, potentially increasing the likelihood of photoreceptor and central visual rescue,” the authors of the paper wrote.

The patients are part of two separate clinical trials, each of which will eventually include 12 patients, Schwartz said. The trials will aim to determine the safety of this particular use of stem cell therapy, as well as the patients’ ability to tolerate the treatment.

No standard treatments exist for either of these eye diseases. The dry form of macular degeneration, the most common form of the disease and the leading cause of blindness in the developed world, affects as many as 30 million people in the United States and Europe, especially those over age 55; the number of people affected is expected to double over the next 20 years as the population ages. Stargardt’s disease causes progressive vision loss, usually starting when patients are between 10 to 20 years old.

In both conditions, the layer of retinal pigment epithelial cells located beneath the retina deteriorates and atrophies. These cells support, protect and provide nutrition for light-sensitive photoreceptors in the eye. Over time, the death of these cells and the eventual loss of the photoreceptors can lead to blindness as central vision is gradually destroyed.

The preliminary report in Lancet is accompanied by a commentary on the findings.

The Jules Stein Eye Institute at UCLA, established in 1966, is a world-renowned center dedicated to the comprehensive preservation of vision, care of eye disorders and prevention of blindness. Through community outreach, the institute has provided free ophthalmic care to hundreds of people who otherwise could not afford contact lenses, glasses, eye care or surgery, including uninsured families, low-income youth and children who require contact lenses for congenital and infantile cataracts. For more information or to make an appointment, call (310) 825-5000 or visit www.jsei.org.

UC Irvine center explores, extols health benefits of exercise in childhood.

Dan Cooper, UC Irvine

Dr. Dan Cooper believes that exercise can be the best medicine — so much so that he’s studying how specifically designed exercise programs for at-risk kids can help curb excessive weight gain, fight diseases and foster long-term fitness.

With childhood obesity and asthma emerging as national health crises, Cooper in 2006 founded UC Irvine’s Pediatric Exercise Research Center, and over the past six years, it has shed light on the full benefits of physical activity.

At any one time, PERC hosts 15 to 20 studies of how — and how much — exercise works to avert type 2 diabetes, limit asthma attacks, thwart arthritis, prevent cancer, encourage mineralization in growing bones, and improve the quality of life for kids with chronic diseases and congenital disorders.

“Our purpose is to recognize the importance of exercise for health and growth in children,” says Cooper, professor and chair of pediatrics at UCI and director of the Institute for Clinical & Translational Science, which supports PERC efforts. “We’re one of the few centers in the country to focus on this crucial issue.”

He and PERC’s associate director, gymnast Shlomit Aizik, maintain that exercise is necessary not only for good childhood health but also to prevent later-in-life maladies such as heart disease and stroke.

Cooper was one of the principal investigators for the nationwide Healthy study, which involved healthier cafeteria choices, longer and more intense periods of physical activity, and robust in-school education programs to lower rates of obesity and other risk factors for type 2 diabetes.

Besides its role in overall fitness, exercise also triggers biochemical mechanisms that activate anti-inflammatory cells and important growth factors, Aizik says.

PERC-supported research on these biochemical mechanisms opened the door to understanding the positive influence of physical activity on immune diseases — most commonly asthma and, to a lesser extent, arthritis, which is increasingly seen in obese children — while addressing a pressing question.

“How much exercise is too much?” Cooper says. “Too much can actually worsen these conditions. The challenge is determining the right ‘dose’ of exercise to achieve anti-inflammatory benefits without causing future harm. PE teachers are not trained for this, so we’re establishing programs to help schools properly integrate the correct amount of exercise.”

PERC researchers are also probing the impact of physical activity during key stages of child development. For example, studies show that diet and exercise are linked to proper mineralization in growing bones, which can stave off osteoporosis in middle and old age.

A PERC group is currently looking at the effects of exercise on infants born two to three months early, missing out on a phase of fetal life marked by lots of body-conditioning physical movement. “This is lost when babies are born prematurely, interfering with a critical growth period,” Cooper says.

His team has created an activity program to offset this deficit. It starts, he says, with passive manipulation of a newborn’s arms and legs and progresses over 12 months to include such motions as head lifting and crawling. After a year, researchers will assess the influence of the exercise on body composition, bone mineralization and additional developmental markers.

Another PERC effort — led by Aizik — seeks to increase physical activity among kids with congenital conditions. College students are being trained to engage spina bifida patients at Miller Children’s Hospital Long Beach in exercise.

“Youngsters with disabilities rarely get enough physical activity,” Aizik says. “And studies show that it improves and extends the quality of life for these children. We want to measure the psychological and physiological results of this mentor-based program to see how we can incorporate an appropriate amount of exercise into their lives.”

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The latest research on cancer prevention, diagnosis and management from UCSF experts.

Cancer can be a devastating disease that either directly or indirectly affects nearly every person in our society. However, in the past 30 years, scientific discovery is teaching us more and more about the disease; how it arises primarily through damage to the genetic program of our cells, leading to uncontrolled growth and invasion, how cancer intrudes upon and destroys adjacent or distant tissues, and how the inner workings of the cancer cell function.

Armed with this knowledge, new strategies for prevention and early detection have evolved. In addition, new types of cancer therapy have been invented that target specific cancer types, often with minimal side effects compared to conventional chemotherapy. As a result, cancer death rates are now falling in some of the most common cancers.

In this UCTV series of talks from the UC San Francisco Osher Mini Medical School for the Public, you’ll get up-to-date information on the current state of cancer prevention, diagnosis and management and how the tools of genetics have raised the prospects for curing certain types of cancer.

Programs include:

New Advances in Prevention and Management of Cancer
First air date: Jan. 2

Cancer Biology 101
First air date: Jan. 9

When Cancer Runs in the Family
First air date: Jan. 16

New Approaches to Personalized Cancer Therapy
First air date: Jan. 23

Harnessing the Immune System for Cancer Treatment
First air date: Jan. 30

Towards the Eradication of Childhood Cancers
First air date: Feb. 6

More from UCSF Osher Mini Medical School for the Public

More UCTV videos on cancer and oncology

Developed therapy to stimulate spinal nerves, helping paralyzed to walk.

V. Reggie Edgerton, UCLA distinguished professor of integrative biology and physiology and of neurobiology; Yury Gerasimenko, professor and director of the laboratory of movement physiology at St. Petersburg’s Pavlov Institute and a researcher in UCLA’s Department of Integrative Biology and Physiology; and colleagues have been awarded a Popular Mechanics’ 2011 Breakthrough Award for developing “an electric therapy that stimulates spinal nerves, allowing the paralyzed to walk.” Edgerton, Gerasimenko and their UCLA colleagues have been studying the effects of electrical stimulation on the spinal cord for more than 30 years.

The annual Breakthrough Awards recognize the innovators and products that dramatically advanced such fields as science, technology and medicine. Popular Mechanics honored this “scientific dream team” for successfully performing the procedure on patient Rob Summers, a paralyzed volunteer who suffered a spinal cord injury from a hit-and-run accident in 2006. Epidural stimulation enabled Summers to stand and voluntarily move his toes, ankles, knees and hips on command.

V. Reggie Edgerton, UCLA

“Our team is very pleased that the recently reported results describing levels of functional recovery not previously observed in an individual with complete motor paralysis are being recognized by a magazine of such distinction and prestige as Popular Mechanics,” Edgerton said. “This magazine has pointed toward futuristic directions in science and engineering for many years and we are proud to be a part of that tradition.

“While our recent accomplishments are viewed as a breakthrough, we have had a large number of scientists in our lab that have played key roles. Since they are not officially listed as awardees, but played such key roles, I would like to recognize Drs. Roland Roy, Niranjala Tilakaratne and Jung Kim for their amazing work.”

“The Popular Mechanics Breakthrough Award is a great honor,” Gerasimenko said. “In the studies performed on Rob, we accumulated our knowledge about posture and locomotion regulation obtained in numerous experiments carried out on animals, using of epidural spinal cord stimulation. I am really happy that we demonstrated that the human spinal cord isolated from brain control can be re-animated by epidural spinal cord stimulation to recovery of locomotor functions and to provide voluntary control.”

UC Davis’ WeCare! Peer Navigator Program helps address disparities.

(From left, front row) Kirollos "Cookie" Gendi, Sarah Wenstrand, Geoffrey Krieger, Liz Salmi; (back row) Azadeh Afkhami, Cheryl Johnson with the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society.

Adolescence and young adulthood generally is a time when young people step out on their own, start romances, attend college, launch careers and begin to build a life independent of their families.

It is a time for hubris, adventure, maybe even rebellion. So how does a cancer diagnosis fit into this period of life? Not well, according to researchers, patients and the health-care professionals who treat young adult cancer patients.

Future UCSF Medical Center at Mission Bay to showcase advances.

A mock up of an acute pediatrics room at the future UCSF Benioff Children's Hospital at Mission Bay shows a multimedia wall.

A man with a rare form of cancer sits in his longtime doctor’s office, where the two of them discuss the latest innovations in treatment with a UCSF cancer specialist located hundreds of miles away.

A diabetic woman uploads data from her blood sugar monitor into UCSF’s secure online patient portal and then participates in a personalized quality-of-life survey – all from the comfort of her kitchen.

A child hospitalized with cystic fibrosis interacts with fellow patients and friends back home through a large video screen on the wall of his room at the UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital.

These are a few of the many scenarios expected to unfold in the coming years as UCSF implements ever-more-advanced technologies designed to make life easier for patients and care providers, and help break the cycle of treating individuals only after they’re sick. Some of the changes will coincide with the planned opening in 2015 of the new UCSF Medical Center at Mission Bay, a state-of-the-art hospital complex designed to accommodate the best current technologies and evolve over time as new innovations arise.

“Technology is the lynchpin for all of us to engage in keeping patients well,” said Seth Bokser, M.D., medical director of information technology at the UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital and co-chair of the Mission Bay IT executive steering committee. “We need to move from a system of sick care to a system of health care.”

Certain tools, such as the increased use of telemedicine, are already in the pipeline. UCSF recently launched a pilot program deploying telemedicine interaction with some of its referring pediatric hospitals so that local health care providers can interact in real time with both a patient in the community and a UCSF expert participating remotely. Alternatively, a provider whose patient is being treated at UCSF’s children’s hospital can stay apprised of his or her condition from afar.

By the time the new UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital opens at Mission Bay, that program is expected to extend to all pediatric referring hospitals, Bokser said. The medical center at Mission Bay also will offer technology-based educational and entertainment options to patients that aren’t available at the current medical center at Parnassus Heights.

“We have many patients who are too sick to get up and get around or be around other children because of their infectious issues,” said Michael Towne, manager of Child Life Services at UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital. “We see kids with cystic fibrosis having conversations with each other out in the hallway, standing 12 feet apart, doing anything they can to connect with another human being.”

Towne says the display screens on the walls of each patient room in the 289-bed medical center now under construction at Mission Bay could prove transformative for such patients.

“Imagine if you could Skype from room to room, or to family members who are back at home. Or if you could upload photos from your favorite vacation and cover the screen with them, like wallpaper,” he said. “We currently have a teen lounge where patients can share their war stories, but imagine if we were able to have a virtual teen lounge that every patient could take part in. We look forward to exploring those possibilities.”

The benefits of such technologies will extend to the new specialty hospitals for women and cancer patients as well, said Elena Gates, M.D., chief of the UCSF Division of General Gynecology, who has been closely involved in the medical center planning process.

“It will be like bringing people to a virtual meeting,” she said of the media walls. “Currently, in our birthing center, people bring in laptops and we see family members all over the world gathering to watch a birth remotely. In the future, we would make it easier for them to experience that special moment or, if someone comes into the cancer hospital for chemotherapy and has a support network back at home, they would be able have a group visit them remotely.”

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A year of protests, progress and medical breakthroughs.

UC Berkeley graduating senior Austin Whitney walks with aid of an exoskeleton.

Just as Time magazine named the Protester as its person of the year, so did unrest shape much of 2011 for the University of California.

Reverberations from January and February’s anti-Mubarek protests in Egypt were felt halfway around the world, as UC took emergency measures to evacuate 30 students, faculty and staff enrolled in a study abroad program and taking part in an archaeological dig.

Less than a year later, protest came much closer to home. The Occupy Wall Street movement — which UC experts analyzed early on — by November had grown into Occupy UC, fueled by student frustration over rising tuition and state disinvestment in public higher education. While nearly every UC campus had an Occupy UC presence, tensions escalated between protesters and police on the Berkeley and Davis campuses.  Scenes of officers wielding batons and pepper spray against students, prompted President Mark Yudof to reaffirm UC’s commitment to peaceful protest. UC’s response culminated with the naming of an investigatory task force, chaired by former California Supreme Court Justice Cruz Reynoso.

The core issue behind Occupy UC — rising tuition as the result of ever-declining state support — colored events throughout 2011. In January, Gov. Jerry Brown’s proposed state budget slashed $500 million from UC: a cut (which climbed to $650 million in the final budget, signed in June) that, for the first time, reduced state support below that paid by student in tuition.

As a result, UC Regents in July approved a 9.6 percent tuition increase for fall 2011, on top of an 8 percent increase approved the previous November. Year-end “trigger” cuts in state support slashed another $100 million from UC after state revenue fell below projections, but UC pledged to close the budget gap without additional tuition hikes.

The rising cost of education did not deter high school seniors and undergraduate transfers hoping to pursue a UC education. Fall 2011 undergraduate applications rose for the seventh straight year, numbering a record 142,235. Waitlists again were implemented at most campuses.

The gloom of the budget situation is always brightened at spring’s end with commencement. That joy was brighter still for a UC Berkeley senior who, against all odds, was able to walk in the commencement ceremony. Austin Whitney, who was paralyzed in a car wreck after graduating high school, took those precious steps thanks to an exoskeleton developed by a team of UC Berkeley engineers.

UC medical research helped many others live better this past year. Surgeons at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center in March performed the first hand transplant in the western United States. (The recipient, Emily Fennell, will be waving from a float in the 2012 Rose Parade on Jan. 2.) In January, a UC Davis surgical team introduced a woman who in October 2010 received a new larynx — the second documented case of its kind in the world. Also in January, UC San Diego surgeons performed the first implant of a total artificial heart; and in September, a successful “domino” liver transplant at UC San Diego — a patient received a new organ and a second patient received the first patient’s liver — saved two lives.

Several campuses continued their pioneering work in medical robotics.  Robot-assisted surgeries for lobe removal to treat lung cancer, and for spinal implants, were performed at UC Irvine in March; UC San Francisco opened an automated hospital pharmacy in March; and UC Santa Cruz launched a new major in robotics engineering, open for enrollment in fall 2011.

Doctors at UC Davis Children’s Hospital helped one fortunate young girl simply live: The 8-year-old from rural Northern California became just the third person in the United States to recover from rabies without receiving the rabies vaccine.

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The 13 recipients from six UC campuses will work to improve quality, value of care.

The University of California’s Center for Health Quality and Innovation has awarded fellowships to 13 recipients from six UC campuses, supporting projects to improve the quality and value of care that UC provides.

The yearlong UC Health Fellowships will build leadership skills and address a range of projects including ones to reduce hospital  readmissions, decrease waiting times in emergency rooms and optimize antibiotic use in health care facilities. The fellows’ institutions will receive a $50,000 award that will support a portion of the salary and benefits associated with their time spent on their projects.

“We want to leverage the incredible brainpower across the UC Health system to improve the value of hospital care through quality,” CHQI Executive Director Terry Leach said.

UC launched the center in October 2010 as part of its commitment to improve the quality of care to medically vulnerable Californians while also developing strategies to improve the delivery of care to help contain costs. The center is governed by a board composed of the six UC medical school deans, five UC medical center CEOs and chaired by the UC senior vice president for health sciences and services. The center, which in July awarded its first round of grants, received initial funding of $5 million — $1 million each from medical centers at UC Davis, UC Irvine, UCLA, UC San Diego and UC San Francisco.

The CHQI board selected the fellows from 34 applications by UC faculty and staff, which were evaluated on four components: applicant strength, application quality, consistency with the center’s mission and the projects’ potential return on investment. Fellows will receive mentorship from their campuses and will meet with the other fellows and leadership from all five UC medical center campuses.

The fellows include:

UC Davis
-John Grubbs, M.S., M.B.A., R.Ph., director of pharmacy, “Development of a UC Medical Center Specialty Pharmacy Program”

-JoAnne Natale, M.D., Ph.D., associate professor of clinical pediatrics, medical director of the pediatric intensive care unit, “Collaborative Incident Response Team”

UC Irvine
-Lisa Gibbs, M.D., associate clinical professor of family medicine, medical director of the SeniorHealth Center, “Transformation of the Primary Care Practice to the Patient-Centered Medical Home Model”

UCLA
-Jim Morrison, senior research associate with the UCLA Health System Patient Safety Institute, “Modeling and Projecting the Impact of Patient Safety-Related Changes in Medicare Reimbursement at the Hospital Unit Level Within the UCLA Health System Over the Next Five to Seven Years”

-Daniel Uslan, M.D., assistant clinical professor of infectious diseases, director of the Antimicrobial Stewardship Program, “Development of a UC-wide Antimicrobial Stewardship Program: Benchmarking and Beyond”

-Michael Yeh, M.D., FACS, associate professor of surgery and medicine, chief of the section of endocrine surgery, medical director of optimal care, “Improve Discharge Times After Elective Surgery”

UC Riverside
-Nasser Salomon, M.B.A., director of learning technologies, “Development of a Telemedicine Strategy for the UC Riverside School of Medicine”

UC San Diego
-Robert El-Kareh, M.D., M.P.H., M.S., assistant professor of medicine, “Certification of Competency and Rapid Feedback to Improve Discharge Medication Lists”

-Adrian Han-Miu, M.B.A., M.S.N., associate director of patient flow, “Improving Emergency Department Throughput”

-Elisabeth McLemore, M.D., FACS, FASCRS, assistant professor of surgery, “Minimally Invasive Recovery After Surgery”

UC San Francisco
-Wendy Anderson, M.D., M.S., assistant professor of medicine, clinician-investigator with the division of hospital medicine and palliative care program, “Nurse-Initiated Multidisciplinary Patient- and Family-Centered Communications in the ICU”

-Kevin Bozic, M.D., M.B.A., associate professor and vice chair of orthopaedic surgery, core faculty of the Philip R. Lee Institute for Health Policy Studies, “Episode of Care ‘Bundled’ Payments”

-Ning Tang, M.D., assistant clinical professor of medicine, “Building a Primary Care Program to Reduce 30-Day Hospital Readmissions at UCSF”