UC Davis biomedical engineers develop microfluidic chip to test for latent TB.

Biomedical engineers at UC Davis have developed a microfluidic chip to test for latent tuberculosis. They hope the test will be cheaper, faster and more reliable than current testing for the disease.

“Our assay is cheaper, reusable and gives results in real time,” said Ying Liu, a research specialist working with professor Alexander Revzin in the UC Davis Department of Biomedical Engineering.

The team has already conducted testing of blood samples from patients in China and the United States.

About one-third of the world’s population is infected with the bacteria that cause tuberculosis, a disease that kills an estimated 1.5 million people worldwide every year, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Most infected people have latent TB, in which the bacteria are kept in check by the immune system. Patients become sick only when the immune system is compromised, enabling the bacteria to become active. People with HIV are at especially high risk.

Current tests for latent TB are based on detecting interferon-gamma, a disease-fighting chemical made by cells of the immune system. Commercially available tests require sending samples to a lab, and can be used just once.

Liu and Revzin used a novel approach: They coated a gold wafer with short pieces of a single-stranded DNA segment known to stick specifically to interferon-gamma. They then mounted the wafer in a chip that has tiny channels for blood samples. If interferon-gamma is present in a blood sample, it sticks to the DNA, triggering an electrical signal that can be read by a clinician.

“If you see that the interferon-gamma level is high, you can diagnose latent TB,” Liu said.

The researchers plan to refine the system so that the microfluidic sensor and electronic readout are integrated on a single chip.

A patent application has been filed for the technology, and the researchers hope the test can be commercialized after FDA approval. The work was supported by the National Science Foundation.

UC Davis grad student Lucas Arzola seeks to speed the process of producing vaccines.

Lucas Arzola, UC Davis

UC Davis graduate student Lucas Arzola’s hometown, Bayamón, Puerto Rico, is famous for two things: pork rinds and traffic. In fact, Puerto Rico’s second-largest city is sometimes called “El Pueblo del Chicharrón” — Pork Rind Town.

The chicharrones are still tasty, but these days Arzola’s hometown, like much of urban Puerto Rico, is cited as a great place to grow up in if you want to be a biotechnology pioneer. Eli Lilly moved to the island in the 1950s, and today more than 100 pharmaceutical companies run manufacturing facilities in Puerto Rico.

Before entering the UC Davis Ph.D. program in chemical engineering, Arzola majored in industrial biotechnology at the University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez. In the past year, at the tender age of 24, he’s suddenly found himself interviewed for newspapers and television for his research into the use of tobacco plants to make vaccines.

With breakthroughs in recombinant DNA technology, tobacco plants provide a medium for growing vaccines quickly — far more quickly than current methods. According to Arzola, faster manufacturing can head off vaccine shortages like the one that caused a crisis during the H1N1 swine flu outbreak in 2009.

“Thousands of lives and millions of dollars were lost because current technologies were not able to provide vaccines fast enough,” said Arzola. “Instead of taking months to produce a vaccine, this platform can produce them in a matter of weeks.”

Although Arzola graduates this spring, he’s planning to stick around the UC Davis campus, where he and professor Karen McDonald are founding a startup biotechnology company, Inserogen. It will be housed at the Engineering Translational Technology Center, a business startup incubator.

At UC Davis, where cutting-edge agricultural research meets Northern California’s humming technology, Arzola found a medium for combining science and entrepreneurship. If his success at winning business competitions is any indication, Arzola’s entrepreneurial skills are growing almost as quickly as his vaccines.

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UCLA partners with Cal State Northridge to nurture students’ interest in science careers.

Sarah Imam, a Cal State Northridge student, is working in the stem cell research lab of Michael Teitell at UCLA .

Sarah Imam had her sights set on medical school until a unique program offered at Cal State University Northridge (CSUN) in partnership with the UCLA stem cell center steered her in a new direction.

A postdoctoral student at CSUN, Imam now envisions a future in science and medicine — with both a doctorate and medical degree — after spending time as a researcher in a laboratory at the Eli and Edythe Broad Center of Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cell Research at UCLA.

Formed two years ago, the six-year partnership between UCLA and CSUN aims to offer a total of 10 CSUN students an eye-opening, mind-expanding opportunity to work in stem cell research labs under the mentorship of renowned stem cell scientists.

The CSUN-UCLA Bridges to Stem Cell Research program that helped realign her career goals is funded through the California Institute of Regenerative Medicine (CIRM), the state’s stem cell agency. By funding courses and research internships for undergraduates and masters-level students, CIRM seeks to train the next generation of stem cell scientists and laboratory technicians.

“It’s been amazing,” said Imam, 29, of North Hollywood. “I pinch myself every day that I get to go to UCLA and work in a lab. It’s a total immersion experience, which makes everything much easier to absorb.”

The Bridges students work full time in the labs and receive a monthly stipend of $2,500. The lab hosting the student receives $3,000 from CIRM, an amount matched by the UCLA Broad stem cell center, to pay for necessary research materials such as reagents, enzymes and other lab supplies. Bridges students also receive $2,000 to support their attendance at important stem cell conferences.

The stipend allows students to focus all of their attention on stem cell research. Participants are not allowed to hold other jobs, said Dr. Michael Teitell, a UCLA professor of pathology and laboratory medicine and pediatrics, a practicing physician and scientist who mentors Bridges students as well as helps coordinate the UCLA arm of the program.

“The goal is to train undergrads and master’s level students in stem cell biology,” said Teitell, who mentors Imam. “This provides an opportunity for students attending CSUN to work in top UCLA labs and get world-class exposure to stem cell science.”

Cindy Malone, an associate professor of biology at ULA, directs the program for CSUN. She characterizes Bridges as an “opportunity of a lifetime.

“The Bridges students are exposed to projects and experiences that we can’t provide to them here under any circumstances,” said Malone, who teaches and runs a lab at CSUN. “We don’t have the kind of research facilities or the resources that UCLA has. This program offers students the whole environment of being immersed in a research career.”

Students spend nine months to a year working in the UCLA stem cell labs. Once at UCLA, they’re paired with either a graduate or postdoctoral student who, with the guidance of the faculty mentor, helps them create and develop their own research project.

“It’s an intense commitment, and most of the students end up working a lot more than they thought they would,” Malone said. “The projects take on lives of their own and become all-consuming.”

That has proven true for Imam, who is studying the unique metabolic properties of stem cells, which are different than those of mature cells. She has found that the stem cell metabolism is very similar to cancer cell metabolism, and the conclusions she ultimately draws from her research may have implications for cancer research. She hopes to uncover an “Achilles heel” in cell metabolism that might one day prove to be a target for therapy.

“My experience in the Bridges program has changed my perspective,” she said. “I see research now as an indispensable element to medicine, and it’s exciting to think of a future contributing to solutions to challenging medical conditions.”

Immersed in the program, Imam attends weekly seminars that feature well-known scientists from other stem cell centers nationwide. She has also attended extramural symposia, where she has presented posters detailing her research project. In June, she’ll be traveling to Japan for the International Society of Stem Cell Research meeting, which draws top scientists from all over the world. She is hoping that an abstract of her research will be accepted.

Generally, Imam works seven days a week in Teitell’s lab, and her hours are flexible, planned around the experiments she needs to conduct for her research. Working long days is not unusual, she said.

“My experience has been consuming and an absolute pleasure,” Imam said. “I can’t believe a program like this really exists.”

Roonalika Wisidagama, 28, of Northridge, was in the first group of Bridges students to work in a UCLA stem cell laboratory. She worked as an undergraduate in Malone’s lab at CSUN and served as the lab manager. She recently was accepted in the doctoral program at the University of Utah and is currently completing her master’s thesis.

“It was definitely a very positive experience, very intense and I enjoyed every bit of it,” said Wisidagama, who has always wanted to be a scientist. “The Bridges program encouraged me, supported my goal to become a scientist and made me want to pursue master’s and doctorate degrees.”

She had been thinking about applying for positions in the biotech industry, but now may set her sights on a career at an academic medical center like UCLA because she found the experience so enriching.

Wisidagama, who also worked in Teitell’s lab, said she found her mentor to be very approachable and available.

“He’s incredibly busy, but his door is always open to you,” she said. “He knows how to talk science on multiple levels. I was an undergraduate when I went into his lab, and he knew not to overwhelm me at first. He was very good at giving me personal attention.”

Bridges officials currently are screening applicants to select the third round of students, who will start the program in the fall. In all, CIRM has given out 16 Bridges to Stem Cell Research Awards to state universities and community colleges across California.

And the program has succeeded in expanding UCLA’s workforce. Several program graduates are currently working in UCLA stem cell labs, Teitell said. Others have gone on to graduate school, medical school or applied for jobs in the biotech industry.

In addition to Teitell, UCLA stem cell scientists currently participating in the program include Dr. Owen Witte, the stem cell center director; Bennett Novitch; William Lowry; Dr. Hanna Mikkola; April Pyle; Jerry Zack; Dr. Brigitte Gomperts; Karen Lyons; and Dong Song An.

Susan Desmond-Hellmann honored for role in biotech and as leader of UCSF.

(From left) UCSF Chancellor Susan Desmond-Hellmann, former U.S. Secretary of State George Shultz, Chief of Protocol for the state of California Charlotte Shultz and Presidio Trust chairman Nancy Hellman Bechtle.

In an event that celebrated the energy, creativity and innovation of the Bay Area, UC San Francisco Chancellor Susan Desmond-Hellmann, M.D., M.P.H., and three other Bay Area leaders were honored on April 18, each receiving the Commonwealth Club of California’s 2012 Distinguished Citizen Award.

The other honorees were Nancy Hellman Bechtle, chairman of the Presidio Trust, who received the William K. Bowes, Jr. Lifetime Achievement Award; Steven Chu, Ph.D., U.S. secretary of energy, distinguished scientist and co-winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1997; and Ron Conway, a Silicon Valley “angel” investor who is on the chancellor’s advisory board of UCSF and a major fundraiser for UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital.

These “rainmakers have made a significant impact on our region by creating business and economic opportunities, or, through their philanthropy and fundraising dedication, have improved the fabric of our social and cultural organizations here in the Bay Area,” wrote the Commonwealth Club in the invitation to the event.

A clinical scientist, Desmond-Hellmann was honored for the critical role she has played in biotechnology, shepherding the first targeted cancer therapies to clinical trial as president of product development at Genentech, and for her current role as the leader of UCSF, where she is supporting the basic and clinical research community and working to create an infrastructure that drives discoveries into new therapies for patients.

She used her brief remarks at the event to extol the passion, commitment and drive of the UCSF community. Being chancellor of UCSF during a time of great financial challenge “is tough,” she volunteered, but, she continued, “All I need to do is get around our trainees … they are going to change the world. … Their core values are giving back to humanity.”

The Commonwealth Club event, which took place at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco, was teeming with civic participants, including Charlotte and George Shultz, who served as U.S. secretary of state, secretary of treasury and secretary of labor, and renowned chef Thomas Keller. The event, emceed by KGO Channel 7 news anchor Dan Ashley, is the Commonwealth Club’s biggest fundraiser of the year.

One of the world’s most powerful innovators

In November 2009, Forbes magazine named Desmond-Hellmann one of the world’s seven most “powerful innovators,” calling her a “hero to legions of cancer patients.” A practicing oncologist early in her career, she was listed among Fortune magazine’s “top 50 most powerful women in business” for seven years, and, in 2010, was inducted in to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and elected to the Institute of Medicine.

Last year, Desmond-Hellmann co-chaired a National Academy of Sciences committee advocating for the creation of a “Google Maps”-like data network that could revolutionize medical research and treatment. The intent of the network would be to integrate emerging research on the molecular makeup of disease with clinical data from patients to drive the development of a more accurate classification, or taxonomy, of disease beyond classification by organs and symptoms. The goal would be to create more diagnostics and treatments tailored to the individual patient — what the committee’s report called “precision medicine,” meaning both “accurate” and “precise.”

Last week, Desmond-Hellmann advanced this effort, penning an editorial in the April 11 issue of Science Translational Medicine in which she called on patient advocates to work with policy makers in the U.S. Congress and elsewhere to develop regulations that would more efficiently link patient information between research and clinical care settings, while continuing to protect patient privacy. The information is a key component of the proposed data network and could accelerate medical advances, she and her academy co-authors say.

That mission is never out of sight for Desmond-Hellmann. As she prepared to move from the reception to the dinner, she was introduced to a man whose wife has stage-4 colon cancer and is being treated with Avastin, a drug that Desmond-Hellmann helped advance through development and the approval process at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration while at Genentech.

They proceeded to discuss his wife’s treatment in some detail, with Desmond-Hellmann explaining aspects of the way the drug works in the body.

“Speaking with you has made my night,” he said.

Dean emeritus of the UCSF Graduate Division was 88.

Lloyd Kozloff

Lloyd Kozloff, an influential microbiologist and dean emeritus of the UC San Francisco Graduate Division, died of heart failure on March 10, 2012, at his seaside home in Fort Bragg. He was 88.

Kozloff moved to UCSF in 1980. He was appointed professor of microbiology and immunology and served as dean of the Graduate Division from 1981 to 1991. He took great satisfaction in mentoring graduate students.

As one who had participated in some of the early interdisciplinary collaborations that led to landmark developments in molecular biology at Cold Spring Harbor, Kozloff brought valuable perspective to the thriving graduate programs at UCSF.

In the 1980s, the Program in Biological Sciences (PIBS) and the Biomedical Sciences (BMS) were developing at the UCSF Parnassus campus and the Graduate Division became responsible for a growing number of postdoctoral students in biological, physical and social sciences.

The stunning discoveries of UCSF’s research scientists in the 1970s were, by the 1980s, being recognized and commercialized through biotechnology and bioengineering, producing many job opportunities for postdocs in industry as well as in dentistry, medicine, nursing and pharmacy.

Born in Chicago in 1923, Kozloff showed his intellectual precocity early on, graduating high school at 16 and earning a bachelor’s degree in biochemistry at the University of Chicago at the age of 19. After a stint in the Navy during WWII, he returned to Chicago, where he earned his doctorate in 1948 working in the laboratory of Earl Evans. Kozloff was immediately asked to join the faculty of the Division of Biological Sciences at his alma mater, where he was promoted to full professor in 1961.

These were exciting times in molecular biology, and Kozloff’s work on bacteriophages helped lay the foundations of modern virology. He was a member of the “phage group,” a network of scientists — including Nobel laureates Salvador Luria and James Watson — concentrating on this particular family of viruses.

Kozloff’s own research focused on the biochemistry of virus replication, and, working with bacterial viruses, he helped pioneer the use of isotopic tracer techniques in biological systems. He was first to demonstrate the transfer of parental viral DNA to viral progeny. Throughout his career he published 85 scientific papers in journals and 16 scientific reviews. One of his early essays is included in the seminal textbook, Phage and the Origins of Molecular Biology, published by Cold Spring Harbor Press. He spent his summers at the Marine Biological Institute of Woods Hole, working with Seymour Cohen and other microbiologists.

In 1963, Kozloff joined the faculty of the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center in Denver as professor of microbiology, continuing his work in bacterial genetics. Along with two colleagues, in 1967 he co-founded the Journal of Virology, a leading scientific periodical, which plans to publish an overview of his contributions.

In Colorado, Kozloff started a new interdisciplinary research strand, studying ice-nucleating bacteria, which he hoped would help prevent crop damage during frosts. He published on this topic in many venues, most notably in Science in 1984.

He and his wife, Bonnie, had four children. He loved hiking, and often enticed junior faculty at conferences to skip the presentations and go hiking instead, an activity and conversation that probably was more intellectually stimulating. A quote from Isak Dinesen decorated the wall of his office, summing up both his scientist’s sense of humor and his essential humility: “What is man, when you come to think upon him, but a minutely set, ingenious machine for turning with infinite artfulness, the red wine of Shiraz into urine?”

Kozloff retired in 1993. In 2005, he received the Distinguished Service Award for outstanding leadership and significant contributions from the Division of Biological Sciences, the Pritzker School of Medicine at the University of Chicago.

He will be remembered for his beaming smile, ready laughter, and passion for national politics. He is survived by his wife of 65 years, two brothers, four children, and six grandchildren.

When Kozloff retired from UCSF a scholarship fund in his name was created to support top-performing graduate students. Contributions in his honor can be made online at http://makeagift.ucsf.edu or via mail at the address below:

Lloyd Kozloff Scholarship Endowment, Fund S0026, UCSF, P.O. Box 45339, San Francisco, CA 94145-0339

Renewal spans four UC campuses, builds on success of 2009 agreement.

Regis Kelly

The California Institute for Quantitative Biosciences (QB3) has renewed and expanded a three-year agreement with Pfizer Inc. to collaborate on research projects at the University of California with the potential to transform world-class science into better medicine.

The renewal expands a 2009 QB3-Pfizer collaboration that led to 22 joint projects across the three QB3 campuses – UC Berkeley, UC San Francisco and UC Santa Cruz – addressing a wide range of bioscience research. The expanded partnership will be open to UC Davis researchers, as well.

The renewal also includes a program to fund innovative projects by postdoctoral scholars to pursue fundamental research questions that have a direct impact on Pfizer’s research and development efforts.

“UC scientists are working in some of the most innovative areas of science, which could have a real impact on patients and our environment,” said QB3 Director Regis Kelly, PhD. “By bringing these scientists together with researchers at Pfizer, we’re hoping to create equally innovative benefits for patients.”

The renewal also includes the opportunity for Pfizer to provide seed funding for startup bioscience companies currently in the QB3 Garage network and to sponsor research that could foster spin-off companies in the future.  Spin-offs are often the best way to move innovation out of a lab and to a patient, Kelly said, as well as a way to create jobs and foster economic development.

“This collaboration has been very productive for Pfizer, and a diversity of scientists from our numerous research centers have enjoyed the scientific interactions we have had with the QB3 network,” said Uwe Schoenbeck, chief scientific officer of Pfizer External R&D Innovation.  “This collaboration has been a model of success for us, and we look forward to an ever-closer relationship with this faculty in the coming years.”

Kelly said the success of this partnership is partially due to efforts to promote collegial interactions between Pfizer scientists and UC faculty, including a speaker series at QB3 that pairs industry scientists with faculty in their areas of expertise and provides a forum for discussing approaches to product development in hopes of spurring further collaborations.

The agreements are part of QB3 and the University of California’s efforts to establish a framework for successful university-industry partnerships while protecting research autonomy and integrity.  These master agreements ensure protections of academic freedoms and transparency, such as the right to publish research findings.

The success of this structure is exemplified in the broad range of collaborations that were formed under the original Pfizer/QB3 agreement, Kelly said, ranging from proof-of-concept research projects to technology translation and disruptive innovations.

While the first arrangement garnered the full $9.5 million in funding, actual funding consistently depends on Pfizer’s interest in specific projects.

QB3 is a cooperative effort among private industry and more than 220 scientists at UCSF, UC Berkeley and UC Santa Cruz. One of four technology institutes created in 2000 by former California Governor Gray Davis, QB3 has a joint mission of supporting science, driving the California economy and transforming scientific research into public good.

Fundamental to the latter two missions are QB3’s efforts to commercialize University of California science by creating mutually beneficial partnerships with industry and supporting innovative entrepreneurs. The effort has led to 45 bioscience startup companies currently in QB3’s Garage/Innovation Network. QB3 also operates Mission Bay Capital, an $11.5 million seed-stage venture capital fund designed to support UC startups. Please visit www.qb3.org.

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Incubator entrepreneurs launch 60 companies, generate 280 jobs, raise $226M.

When QB3 opened its “garage” for bioscience entrepreneurs in 2006, detractors deemed it a quixotic venture, sure to fill with aspiring startups that would never leave campus.

Six years later, QB3, or the California Institute for Quantitative Biosciences, and its partners have helped launch 60 new bioscience companies in a growing network of five incubators at the UC San Francisco Mission Bay campus and across the bridge at UC Berkeley.

Starting in spaces as small as one  lab bench, or 90 square feet, those startups have gone on to create more than 280 jobs and have attracted $226 million in follow-on funding during one of the worst recessions in the nation’s history.

Of the 60 companies that have launched, 45 are still in the incubator network, while 13 have moved into commercial space or have been purchased by larger companies. Only two are no longer in business.

“This has been an unqualified success,” said Douglas Crawford, PhD, QB3’s associate director. “These incubators have enabled us to bridge the gap between great university science and commercial success.”

Among the first six startups, four raised venture capital in a tight funding market and a fifth was acquired by Affymetrix for $25 million. One of those six is Fluxion Biosciences, a research tools company launched by a UC Berkeley graduate student that has raised more than $16 million in venture funding and brought four cell-analysis devices to market to help in drug discovery and research.

Newer garage members include Omniox, a cancer therapeutics company led by a team of UC Berkeley and UCSF graduates, which raised $4 million in Small Business Innovation Research grants; and Refactored Materials, a venture-funded UCSF spinoff that is using synthetic biology to produce spider silk.

“The vision for Mission Bay has always been as a place where scientists and entrepreneurs can take bold, new ideas to market faster and more successfully than anywhere else,” said San Francisco Mayor Edwin M. Lee.

“QB3 is an engine for new company creation which is driving job growth and economic activity in the city,” he said. “We are proud partners with QB3 in making San Francisco the innovation capital of the world.”

More than a third of these companies are direct spinoffs from University of California laboratories, representing one of QB3’s core missions of translating the public investment in UC science into companies and products that can directly benefit patients or society. The rest are entrepreneurs who sought out the QB3 incubators for their proximity to university science, technologies and the talent and connections needed in the starting phases of company growth.

“We needed to lower the barrier between great research and great impact to society,” Crawford said. “So we created this space where we can rent a single bench to a former graduate student or postdoc to take the idea out of the lab and create a company.”

The team envisioned a “garage” akin to the actual one-car garage that launched Hewlett Packard and the PC industry, but one suited to the needs of a bioscience company, with lab benches and access to equipment, scientific camaraderie and entrepreneurial expertise.

Until now, the only option for such a scientist was to rent 2,500 square feet of high-cost lab space in an industrial park until they could make it to the proof-of-concept stage that would attract investors. That’s tough to do on a credit card.

Starting with six small lab benches in January 2006, QB3 welcomed Fluxion as its first startup. Word quickly spread, until the institute was receiving one to four requests a week for space.

“The demand from entrepreneurs has been astounding,” said Kenneth Harrison, PhD, QB3’s Entrepreneurship Program manager, who leads the BioSF collaboration between QB3 and the City of San Francisco to promote bio-entrepreneurship.

“For most of these companies, lab space was a critical barrier to commercialization. Having these companies located together helps us to identify other barriers as well,” he said. “Our goal is to eliminate all of these barriers, one by one, until San Francisco is the best place in the world at launching biotech companies.”

In 2009, QB3 partnered with FibroGen and the City of San Francisco to open its second incubator across the street from the UCSF campus, then two other incubators in Berkeley to fill the need. Last fall, the institute welcomed its fifth incubator space, this time back on the Mission Bay campus, as a dry-lab for companies working in bioinformatics.

Today, the companies range in focus from developing new biomaterials to discovering new ways of transporting chemotherapy drugs directly to cancer stem cells to target the most aggressive forms of cancer. Roughly half of the companies are working on new therapeutics or medical devices, while others work in areas such as biofuels and digital health, drawing from the extensive engineering and health expertise on the UC Berkeley and UCSF campuses.

Along the way, the institute also has created a package of services known as the QB3 Startup in a Box and a network of mentors and connections to support the fledgling companies as they move into larger spaces, seek federal or private funding, or hire scientific talent.

QB3 is a cooperative effort among private industry and more than 220 scientists at UCSF, UC Berkeley and UC Santa Cruz. One of four technology institutes created in 2000 by former California Governor Gray Davis, QB3 has a joint mission of supporting science, driving the California economy and transforming scientific research into public good.

Fundamental to the latter two missions are QB3’s efforts to commercialize University of California science by creating mutually beneficial partnerships with industry and supporting innovative entrepreneurs. The effort has led to 45 bioscience startup companies currently in QB3’s Garage/Innovation Network. QB3 also operates Mission Bay Capital, an $11.5M seed-stage venture capital fund designed to support UC startups. Please visit www.qb3.org.

UC Irvine program will prepare scientists to turn research into improved patient care.

Sherrie Kaplan, UC Irvine

The UC Irvine School of Medicine has kicked off an innovative master’s degree program in biomedical translational science that will prepare emerging doctors and scientists to turn basic and clinical research into improved patient care.

The Master’s of Science in Biomedical and Translational Science (MS-BATS) is a flexible program developed to address the acute needs for clinical researchers trained to meet the increasingly sophisticated demands of the clinical research environment. It is aimed at junior faculty in clinical departments, fellows, residents, fourth-year medical students, physicians and others with a solid basic science foundation who are interested in developing the skills needed to conduct, interpret, evaluate and apply clinical research.

“The recent emphasis by the federal government to speed biomedical discoveries into the health care marketplace make this program particularly timely,” said Sherrie Kaplan, program director and executive co-director of UCI’s Health Policy Research Institute. “Our curriculum has been developed to meet the increasingly sophisticated demands of the clinical research environment.”

The curriculum involves two years – six academic quarters plus one summer quarter – of coursework and research training. During their first year, students will focus on required coursework needed to establish a solid foundation in the fundamental disciplines underlying modern biomedical and clinical research. The second-year curriculum provides extensive research training where students will choose a research mentor and apply those principals learned during their first year of coursework.

“Initially, our MS-degree program curriculum will focus on the conduct and interpretation of clinical research and the assessment and improvement of quality of health care,” Kaplan said. “The long-range expectation is to offer additional fields of emphasis, especially in molecular medicine and population health sciences.”

For more information, see: www.som.uci.edu/msbats.

UC-owned site chosen for the proposed consolidation of the lab’s biosciences programs.

Richmond Field Station architectural rendering

The University of California announced today (Jan. 23) that it has identified the Richmond Field Station as its preferred site for the proposed consolidation of the biosciences programs of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. The University of California-owned site presents the best opportunity to solve the lab’s pressing space problems while allowing for long-term growth and maintaining the 80-year tradition of close cooperation with the UC Berkeley campus.

With this identification of a preferred site, the university will now move ahead with developing environmental impact studies and with the process of seeking final approval from the U.S. Department of Energy for the project.

“Each city, community and their developer partners presented extremely thoughtful and well-formulated proposals for us to consider, for which we are deeply grateful,” says Berkeley Lab Director Paul Alivisatos. “The communities of Albany, Alameda, Berkeley, Emeryville, Oakland and Richmond have been true partners in this process. While we can only pick one site, we hope that the new relationships we’ve made will continue to help us foster excitement in science. The enthusiasm is wonderful affirmation of the desire of the entire East Bay to be part of developing scientific solutions to some of the greatest challenges facing our society.”

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Simple universal test spots biomarkers for group of disorders, may speed diagnosis.

Jeffrey Esko, UC San Diego

A team of scientists, led by researchers at the University of California, San Diego, School of Medicine and Zacharon Pharmaceuticals, have developed a simple, reliable test for identifying biomarkers for mucopolysaccharidoses (MPS), a group of inherited metabolic disorders that currently are diagnosed in patients only after symptoms have become serious and the damage possibly irreversible.

The findings will be published online Sunday in the journal Nature Chemical Biology.

MPS is caused by the absence or malfunctioning of a lysosomal enzyme required to break down and recycle complex sugar molecules called glycosaminoglycans, which are used to build bone, tendons, skin and other tissues. If not degraded and removed, glycosaminoglycans can accumulate in cells and tissues, resulting in progressive, permanent damage affecting appearance, physical abilities, organ function and often mental development in young children. The effects range from mild to severe.

There are 11 known forms of MPS, each involving a different lysosomal enzyme. A number of treatments exist, including enzyme replacement therapy and hematopoietic stem cell transplantation, but efficacy depends upon diagnosing the disease and its specific form as early as possible. That has been problematic, said Jeffrey D. Esko, Ph.D., professor in the Department of Cellular and Molecular Medicine and co-director of the Glycobiology Research and Training Center at UC San Diego.

“The typical time from seeing first symptoms to diagnosis of MPS is about three years. Since the early signs of disease are common childhood issues like ear infections and learning disorders, the disease is usually not immediately recognized,” Esko said.

“A child often has multiple visits with their pediatrician. Eventually they are referred to a metabolic disease specialist, where rare diseases are considered. It takes an expert to identify MPS and its most likely form in each patient. Every subclass of MPS has its own specific diagnostic test, so developing better diagnostics is an essential part of effective treatment. ”

In their paper, the scientists describe an innovative method to detect tell-tale carbohydrate structures specific to glycosaminoglycans in the cells, blood and urine of MPS patients. The biomarker assay identifies all known forms of the disease.

Esko is collaborating with Zacharon Pharmaceuticals, a San Diego-based biotechnology company, to develop a commercial diagnostic assay for differentiating forms of MPS from urine and blood samples, a screening test for newborns and a tool for measuring the biochemical response of MPS patients to existing and novel therapies.

“Since the severity of the disease is highly variable among patients, this could provide a tool that a doctor can use to optimize dosing or treatment,” said Brett Crawford, vice president for research at Zacharon. “Currently, all patients are treated with the same dose of drug.”

The biomarker test may also be used to discover new forms of MPS and better characterize existing ones.

Disclosure: Esko co-founded Zacharon Pharmaceuticals in 2004 with Brett E. Crawford and Charles Glass. He is a scientific advisor to the company.

Co-authors include Roger Lawrence and William C. Lamanna, UC San Diego Department of Cellular and Molecular Medicine, Glycobiology Research and Training Center; Jillian R. Brown, James R. Beitel and Brett E. Crawford, Zacharon Pharmaceuticals; Geert-Jan Boones and Kanar Al-Mafraji, University of Georgia, Athens.

Funding for this research came, in part, from the National Institutes of Health, a Kirschstein National Research Service Award and the National MPS Society.

Extending Innovation Network program selects three projects; other academic partners with Roche include UCSF.

Joan Heller Brown, UC San Diego

The new UC San Diego-Roche Extending Innovation Network (EIN) program has been launched with selection of its first three research projects at the University of California, San Diego, School of Medicine. The UC San Diego-Roche EIN program, which was formalized in June 2011, aims to accelerate the discovery of new drug therapies through research innovation at the interface of industry and academia. The program is slated to grow in the coming years as additional rounds of proposals are solicited.

Under this partnership, faculty-initiated research projects are selected for funding from proposals solicited campuswide on a planned biannual basis. The program is headed by a joint steering committee comprising two Roche researchers and two UC San Diego faculty members, Joan Heller Brown, Ph.D., professor and chair of the Department of Pharmacology, and Michael K. Gilson, M.D., Ph.D., professor of pharmacy and pharmaceutical sciences and director of UC San Diego’s new Drug Discovery Institute.

“We are very pleased about this exciting and innovative partnership, which strengthens UCSD Health Sciences’ strategic goal of broadly advancing our programs in drug discovery,” said David A. Brenner, M.D., vice chancellor for health sciences and dean of the UC San Diego School of Medicine.

The EIN program allows Roche to have the first look at in-licensing opportunities that match the company’s strategy, and is designed to further strengthen the cooperation between university research and pharmaceutical development. Other academic institutions that are partners with Roche in the EIN program include Harvard University and UC San Francisco.

The three two-year projects selected in this initial round will use innovative molecular technologies recently developed at UC San Diego to gain a deeper understanding of the mechanisms of neuropsychiatric disease and leukemia, with the ultimate goal of developing effective new treatments.

“This funding will help provide important new opportunities to translate basic discoveries and leading-edge technologies from UC San Diego’s research laboratories into needed therapies for patients — an effort being spearheaded by our new Drug Discovery Institute,” said Palmer Taylor, Ph.D., associate vice chancellor for health sciences and dean of the Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences.

The three projects selected for this initial round of funding are as follows.

Xiang-Dong Fu, Ph.D., professor of cellular and molecular medicine and member of the UC San Diego Institute of Genomic Medicine, in collaboration with Michael G. Rosenfeld, M.D., will use cutting-edge genomic and RNA-based approaches to help identify new potential therapeutic targets.  Coupled with a new gene-signature approach, this research project could identify compounds that will ultimately lead to the discovery of new neuropsychiatric drugs.

Paul Insel, Ph.D., professor of pharmacology and medicine, will investigate the expression of the GPCR family of receptors on the surface of cells from patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL). There are limited successful therapies for CLL, which is the most common form of adult leukemia and can progress to a very aggressive form that is rapidly lethal.  Insel seeks to identify new targets for drugs to improve the course of this disease.

Gene Yeo, Ph.D., assistant professor of cellular and molecular medicine, will apply innovative technologies to detect abnormal patterns of RNA in neurons and discover molecules that reverse these defects. This work has promise for the treatment of a variety of neuropsychiatric disorders.

Takeda buys Intellikine.

Kevan Shokat, UC San Francisco

A cancer drug company founded by UC San Francisco professor Kevan Shokat, Ph.D., has been acquired by Japan-based Takeda Pharmaceuticals in an effort to add two novel drug projects to Takeda’s pipeline of potential oncology therapies.

Shokat, who chairs the UCSF Department of Cellular and Molecular Pharmacology, launched Intellikine in 2007 to translate his UCSF kinase research into the development of small-molecule drugs. Kinases are enzymes that are known to regulate the majority of cellular pathways. The Intellikine therapies specifically target the PI-3 kinase (PI3K) pathway – a key target in cancer biology due to its impact on a wide array of cellular functions, including cell growth, proliferation and survival.

Intellikine is based on Shokat’s research at UCSF into four common variations of this pathway. In just four years, the company has developed a portfolio of novel small-molecule kinase inhibitors that selectively target the drivers of cancer cell growth and already has moved three potential drugs into human clinical trials. Takeda’s announcement identified two specific drug candidates — INK128 and INK1117 – as being potential “best in class” inhibitors of cancer growth. The third candidate is being developed in partnership with Infinity Pharmaceuticals.

Under the agreement, Takeda America Holdings will purchase Intellikine for $190 million in cash, plus up to $120 million in so-called “BioBucks,” or projected payments linked to specific milestones in clinical development.