David Julius wins Janssen Award.

David Julius, UC San Francisco

David Julius, Ph.D., who uses natural molecules found in tarantulas and hot chili peppers to study pain, has been named the winner of the 2013 Dr. Paul Janssen Award for Biomedical Research.

Julius, professor and chair of the UC San Francisco Department of Physiology, won for his discovery of the molecular mechanism that controls the sensory perception of temperature, and for his discoveries of this mechanism’s role in the sensation of acute and inflammatory pain. These discoveries have significantly advanced the study of pain and may lead to new pain therapies.

He has won numerous prestigious honors and awards, among them the Shaw Prize, the Passano Award, the Prince of Asturias Award for Technical and Scientific Research, the Scolnick Prize from the McGovern Institute for Brain Research, the Unilever Science Prize and the Klaus Joachim Zülch Neuroscience Prize.

He joined UCSF in 1990, after completing his postdoctoral studies at Columbia University.

The Dr. Paul Janssen Award for Biomedical Research, which carries a $100,000 prize, was created by Johnson & Johnson to honor the legacy of scientist Paul Janssen (1926-2003), whose work led to the development of more than 80 transformational medicines in several fields, including pain management, psychiatry, infectious disease and gastroenterology. Janssen founded Janssen Pharmaceutica, which was acquired by Johnson & Johnson in 1961.

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Sacramento State student to be awarded funds on Father’s Day at UC Davis cancer center.

Kimberly Schmidt

A Sacramento-area college student will receive a $2,500 college scholarship Sunday after being selected from hundreds of applicants based on an essay detailing her family’s experience following her father’s brain tumor diagnosis and treatment.

Kimberly Schmidt, a 20-year-old senior, will be honored Sunday at the UC Davis Comprehensive Cancer Center, surrounded by 23 athletes who are running across the country to raise funds for programs to benefit adolescent and young adults with cancer. The runners are part of 4K for Cancer, one of several fund-raising events of the Ulman Cancer Fund for Young Adults based in Columbia, Md.

“What sticks out in Kimberly’s essay was her persistence and will to keep fighting even with all the curve balls thrown her way,” said Steve Hersey, program manager of 4K for Cancer and a member of the scholarship committee. “Her optimism is a strong theme throughout her essay.”

Bobby Schmidt was 54 in 2006 when he experienced a seizure while camping with his family at Medicine Lake in the Cascade Range. Because the remote area was a two-hour drive from the nearest hospital, he was taken by helicopter to a hospital. Three days later he was diagnosed with an inoperable oligoastroytoma, a slow-growing brain tumor. Mr. Schmidt was transferred to the UC Davis Comprehensive Cancer Center, where he underwent 18 months of chemotherapy.

Because of frequent seizures, he suddenly needed rides to his job and to his regular chemotherapy appointments. Everyone in the family pitched in to keep the household running smoothly, including Kimberly, then a freshman at Folsom High School.

“From that day on, anything I needed to do, she was going to take care to make sure it got done,” Bobby Schmidt said of his daughter. “She was constantly trying to make sure everything was OK. She picked up the house. And if the lawn needed mowing, she would go out and cut it.”

Throughout the course of her father’s treatment, Kimberly maintained top grades, played several instruments, excelled at portrait drawing, participated in the jazz and marching bands and volunteered for various veterans’ organizations.

“Even though living with a cancer patient presents challenges, I have been successful because I know that every day is a gift to be embraced and lived to the fullest,” Kimberly wrote in her scholarship application.  Kimberly will graduate with a double major in English and marketing and plans to attend law school.

On this Father’s Day and every day, Kimberly says she draws inspiration from her father, whose brain tumor still causes frequent seizures but is under control.

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California Association of Physician Groups gives UCLA Medical Group its highest ranking.

The UCLA Medical Group has earned a four-star ranking, the highest achievement possible, in the California Association of Physician Groups’ (CAPG) seventh annual Standards of Excellence survey.

The survey is a voluntary, critical self-assessment for the CAPG’s 150 medical group members in California. It tallies the “tools” required for health care systems to deliver a better patient experience, better population health and better affordability, as outlined in the Institute for Healthcare Improvement’s Triple Aim initiative.

This year, 36 organizations achieved elite status, which involved intense testing and documentation.

“The UCLA Medical Group is honored to receive this important recognition and we are very proud of our four-star rating,” said Dr. Samuel A. Skootsky, chief medical officer of the UCLA Faculty Practice and Medical Group. ”Participation in this survey has encouraged us to continually improve upon our capabilities in care coordination and case management to the benefit of the patients we serve — and to demonstrate our commitment to healing humankind one patient at a time.”

“The architects of health care reform have set the bar not merely to get by but to far surpass all expectations for truly coordinated patient care,” said Dr. Wells Shoemaker, CAPG’s medical director. ”We know from the experience of our member groups that it takes determined leadership, synchronized initiatives across hundreds of physicians, and leading-edge tech tools to honor the individual patient experience, improve the health of populations, and hone the efficiency of our country’s health care system.

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UC Davis’ Nirmal Mann honored by organization in Great Britain.

Nirmal Mann, UC Davis

Nirmal S. Mann, professor in the UC Davis Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology, has been designated as a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians in Edinburgh and London.

Mann received the designation following an evaluation of his credentials, publications and contributions to academic medicine and gastroenterology, nationally and internationally, by academicians Royal Colleges of Edinburgh and London.

Mann has published 180 papers, 171 abstracts and made 224 scientific presentations in the U.S. and abroad. He has contributed many chapters to books in the fields of gastroenterology and gastrointestinal endoscopy. He is the author of two books on gastrointestinal topics, and has received awards for excellence in teaching from the University of Louisville, Texas A&M University College of Medicine and gastrointestinal fellows at UC Davis.

He has served as editor, co-editor, referee and reviewer for many journals, and completed appointments as a visiting professor nationally and internationally.

As a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, Mann may act as an examiner for the oral MRCP(UK) examination, which will provide him with an opportunity to compare the clinical competence of American graduate physicians with those of Great Britain and other international graduates.

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Craig Byus honored by David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA.

Craig Byus (right) of the UC Riverside School of Medicine accepts the award from Alan Robinson of the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA.

Craig V. Byus, Ph.D., senior associate dean of academic affairs and research in the UC Riverside School of Medicine, received the Lifetime Achievement in Medical Education Award from the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA on May 22.

Dr. Alan Robinson, associate vice chancellor and senior associate dean at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, presented the award to Byus at the UCR School of Medicine’s annual clinical faculty recognition and student awards ceremony in downtown Riverside.

“His leadership and role modeling at Riverside was instrumental in developing the program here,” said Robinson, who emphasized Byus’ role in leading the development of the unique mission of the UCR/UCLA Thomas Haider Program in Biomedical Sciences.

Byus is only the third recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award in its 18-year existence. In addition to his exemplary career in teaching and service, the award recognizes his leadership in the complete redesign of the UCR/UCLA Thomas Haider Program in Biomedical Sciences, which resulted in a program geared toward diversifying the physician workforce and training physicians who would serve the underserved populations within Inland Southern California.

“This is a much-deserved honor that I am pleased to see Craig receive,” said Dr. G. Richard Olds, dean of the UCR School of Medicine. “I strongly believe that had it not been for his vision, commitment and wise counsel in the transformation of the UCR/UCLA Thomas Haider Program in Biomedical Sciences, the UCR School of Medicine would not be where it is today.”

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UC San Diego grad student receives Gates Foundation Grand Challenges Explorations grant.

Greg Goldgof, UC San Diego

The University of California, San Diego School of Medicine announced today that it is a Grand Challenges Explorations winner, an initiative funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.  Greg G. Goldgof, a graduate student in UC San Diego’s Biomedical Sciences Graduate Program and the Medical Science Training Program will pursue an innovative global health and development research project, titled “Outsmarting Malaria: Developing next generation anti-malarials that prevent the evolution of drug resistance.”

Grand Challenges Explorations (GCE) funds individuals worldwide to explore ideas that can break the mold in how we solve persistent global health and development challenges.  Goldgof’s project is one of over 50 Grand Challenges Explorations Round 10 grants announced today (May 21) by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

To receive funding, Goldgof and other Grand Challenges Explorations Round 10 winners demonstrated in a two-page online application a bold idea in one of four critical global heath and development topic areas that included agriculture development, neglected tropical diseases and communications.

Goldgof works in the lab of Elizabeth Winzeler, Ph.D., a professor in the Department of Pediatrics at UC San Diego School of Medicine.  The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation grant will support Goldgof’s work to use genetically engineered yeast to rapidly evolve resistance to potential anti-malarial therapies, and then sequence the resistant strains’ genomes to discover the mechanism for resistance to each drug. The hope is that this information will guide development of the next-generation of drugs that can overcome drug resistance to successfully fight malaria, which kills more than a million men, women and children each year, many of them in underdeveloped countries.

“I am very appreciative that the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has funded my proposal to develop a new technology for drug development to treat malaria,” said Goldgof.  “This information will be used to prioritize drug candidates for clinical trials and to identify new malaria drug targets for future therapies.”

Goldgof will use genetically engineered yeast developed by collaborator Yo Suzuki, Ph.D., an assistant professor at J. Craig Venter Institute in La Jolla.

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Hartwell Foundation Awards support UC Davis research to benefit children.

Lin Tian and Candice Clay, UC Davis

Three researchers from the University of California, Davis, are among the scientists selected to receive Individual Biomedical Research Awards from The Hartwell Foundation this year. The awards recognize early-stage, innovative and cutting-edge biomedical research that has the potential to benefit children in the U.S. and beyond.

Each award provides $100,000 of direct support per year for three years, as well as videoconferencing equipment to facilitate mentorship with the Foundation and collaboration with other award recipients. UC Davis also received a Hartwell Fellowship to fund one postdoctoral candidate of its choice that exemplifies the values of the foundation. The fellowship provides support for two years at $50,000 in direct cost per year.

Individual Biomedical Research Award winners are Lin Tian and Angela Gelli, both in the UC Davis School of Medicine. Candice Clay, a postdoctoral researcher at the California National Primate Research Center at UC Davis, was selected by UC Davis to receive the Hartwell Fellowship.

The Hartwell Foundation designated UC Davis as one of its Top Ten Centers for Biomedical Research for the third year in a row. The prestigious designation, held by only a few of the nation’s top research facilities, places UC Davis in company with other stalwarts such as Cornell, Duke and Johns Hopkins universities and St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. Including Gelli and Tian, the Foundation has honored seven UC Davis scientists and engineers with Individual Biomedical Research Awards since 2009.

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Caring Wisely initiative funds two projects.

As part of efforts to reduce the cost of health care while also improving quality, the UCSF Center for Healthcare Value (CHV) has announced winners of its “Caring Wisely” initiative.

The initiative gives awards of up to $50,000 for interventions to reduce health care costs at UCSF Medical Center. The CHV team awarded funding for two projects from among 20 proposals submitted through UCSF Open Proposals.

“The Caring Wisely initiative helped to bring out even more of the creativity, collaboration and innovation that exists within our world-class hospital,” said Joshua Adler, M.D., chief medical officer of UCSF Medical Center and UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital. “I anticipate that progress will be made in response to several proposals, and in particular, the two winning proposals represent opportunities that are right for both the medical center and for patients.”

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Howard Hughes Medical Institute funds new, creative ideas.

Russell Vance, UC Berkeley

Six University of California scientists from three campuses have been selected to be Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigators.

They were among 27 new investigators selected from among 1,155 applications by HHMI, a nonprofit medical research organization headquartered in Chevy Chase, Md.

HHMI investigators receive financial support aimed at providing the recipients with flexibility to pursue new, creative ideas. UC investigators will explore issues such as how songbirds learn to sing, how microbes affect the immune system, and how genes are shuffled and passed to the next generation.

HHMI will provide each investigator with his or her full salary, benefits and a research budget over the initial five-year appointment. It will also cover other expenses, including research space and the purchase of critical equipment. Contingent on a successful scientific review, appointments may be renewed for additional five-year terms.

UC recipients include:

UC Berkeley

• Nicole King
• Michael Rape
• Russell Vance

UC Davis

• Neil Hunter

UC San Francisco

• Michael Brainard
• Dyche Mullins

Related links:

• UC Berkeley
• UC Davis
• UCSF
• HHMI

Hospital goes above and beyond to support breastfeeding employees.

Lindsay Barrett and lactation consultant Deborah Albert, UC Davis

UC Davis Medical Center has been named a recipient of the Mother-Baby Friendly Workplace Award from the Breastfeeding Coalition of Greater Sacramento, an affiliate of the California Breastfeeding Coalition. Each year, the coalition presents the award to local organizations that have been nominated by their employees to demonstrate appreciation for businesses that go ‘above and beyond’ to support their breastfeeding employees. The award will be presented on May 13 at 11 a.m. on the North Steps of the State Capitol.

A mother-baby friendly workplace provides support for employees, or their partners, who want to provide breast milk for their babies while they are at work. The coalition recognizes workplaces that ensure compliance with existing state and federal laws requiring employers to provide time and space for employees who want to express their breast milk for their babies.

Lindsay Barrett, a clinical nurse in the emergency department, nominated UC Davis for the honor. Barrett delivered her son Jackson at UC Davis eight months ago.

“Coming back to work as a new mom was very stressful and overwhelming,” Barrett said. “But I felt overwhelming support from the hospital. I have many places to pump my breastmilk and people available to help me.

“I’ve also felt really supported by all of my co-workers,” she added.

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Medical school receives an AAFP Top Ten Award.

The American Association of Family Physicians (AAFP) has recognized UC Davis School of Medicine as one of the nation’s top 10 schools for graduating medical students who go on to family medicine residencies.

The AAFP Top Ten Award is given each year to medical schools that foster student interest in family medicine and produce graduates who enter the specialty, which focuses on providing continuous, comprehensive and preventive care in the context of family and community.

Jeff Cain, president of the AAFP, recognized this year’s winners for their commitment to meeting the nation’s need for family physicians.

“I commend them, their leadership and their faculty for helping ensure that Americans have access to the care they need,” said Cain.

According to the AAFP, nearly 16 percent (based on a three-year average) of UC Davis School of Medicine graduates entered family medicine residency programs accredited by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education.

Suzanne Eidson-Ton, associate professor of family and community medicine and director of UC Davis Rural PRIME (Program in Medical Education), was on hand to receive the award today at the Society of Teachers of Family Medicine spring conference in Baltimore.

“UC Davis has a long tradition of providing an encouraging and academically excellent learning environment for students interested in family medicine,” said Eidson-Ton. “This award recognizes our commitment to help expand the numbers of physicians in the U.S. who are in the best position to improve the health of individuals, their families and their broader communities while controlling health care costs.”

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