Roche Funds Drug Discovery Projects at UC San Diego
“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, MD, vice chancellor for Health Sciences and dean of the UCSD School of Medicine.
New Chair Named for UC San Diego Department of Medicine
Wolfgang H. Dillmann, MD, has been selected as chair of the Department of Medicine at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine. He has also been named the Helen M. Ranney Endowed Chair, the school’s first faculty-funded endowed chair, founded in 1991 in honor of the department’s second chair.
With nearly 470 full-time faculty members and more than 100 academic researchers, the Department of Medicine is one of the inaugural departments in the UCSD School of Medicine and the largest. Nationally recognized for research, teaching and clinical care in internal medicine in specialties ranging from arthritis and respiratory disease to hypertension and cancer, its internal medicine specialty training programs include 108 resident physicians, 83 ACGME fellows, and 131 postdoctoral research fellows. The department is also engaged in nearly 380 different biomedical research programs with funding awards totaling $113.6 million in fiscal year 2011.
New Approach to Management of Overeating in Children
Overeating, whether in children or adults, often takes place even in the absence of hunger, resulting in weight gain and obesity. Current methods to treat such overeating in youth focus on therapies that restrict what kids may eat, requiring them to track their food intake and engage in intensive exercise.
But for most children, such behavioral therapy techniques don’t work long term, according to Kerri Boutelle, PhD, associate professor of psychiatry and pediatrics at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine. Boutelle and colleagues are developing new ways to treat overeating in children and adults.
Their study, published in the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology this week, describes two new methods for reducing overeating. The overall aim of these studies is to improve responses to internal hunger and satiety cues and decrease physiological and psychological responses to foods in the environment. Basically, how do we learn to stop eating when we are no longer hungry?
The first treatment group, called appetite awareness training, trains children and parents to recognize, and appropriately respond to, hunger and satiety cues. The other treatment group, called cue exposure training, trains children and their parents to resist the food that is in front of them.
Zebrafish model of atherosclerosis.
Testing Antioxidant Drugs is Transparent
A study using genetically modified zebrafish to visualize early events involved in development of human atherosclerosis describes an efficient model – one that the researchers say offers many applications for testing the potential effectiveness of new antioxidant and dietary therapies.
The research, led by scientists from the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine, has been published online by the Journal of Clinical Investigation, and will appear in print in the December 1 issue of the journal.
Atherosclerosis is a process of lipid deposition and inflammation in the artery walls. Low-density lipoprotein (LDL) that carries “bad” cholesterol in blood is easily oxidized, and oxidized LDL promotes inflammatory responses by vascular cells. Inflamed atherosclerotic plaque can often rupture; this results in a blood clot, obstruction of blood flow to the heart or brain, and heart attack or stroke.
An international team of researchers led by Yury Miller, MD, PhD, of the UCSD Department of Medicine, working with colleagues in Australia, developed an approach to see – literally – the accumulation of oxidized LDL in genetically modified zebrafish fed a diet high in cholesterol. Because young zebrafish are transparent, the researchers were able to study vascular lipid accumulation, lipid oxidation, and uptake of oxidized LDL by macrophages – all in live animals.
Autism Linked with Excess of Neurons in Prefrontal Cortex
A study by researchers at the University of California, San Diego Autism Center of Excellence shows that brain overgrowth in boys with autism involves an abnormal, excess number of neurons in areas of the brain associated with social, communication and cognitive development.
The scientists discovered a 67 percent excess of cortical cells – a type of brain cell only made before birth – in children with autism. The findings suggest that the disorder may arise from prenatal processes gone awry, according to lead researcher Eric Courchesne, PhD, professor of neurosciences at the UC San Diego School of Medicine and director of the Autism Center of Excellence.
Relying on meticulous, direct cell counting, the study – to be published November 9 by the Journal of the American Medical Society (JAMA) and funded in part by the National Institutes of Health – confirms a relatively recent theory about possible causes of autism.
Genetically Influenced Responses to Alcohol Affect Brain Activation
A study by researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine suggests that differences in brain activation in individuals with a low level of response to alcohol may contribute to their inability to recognize modest levels of alcohol intoxication. Their findings could provide the potential to identify individuals who are at risk for developing an alcohol-use disorder before it develops – in essence, providing a marker for this vulnerability.
In a study to be published in the January 2012 issue of Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research and currently available at the journal’s Early View, researchers used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to examine brain activation in young men and women in San Diego, ages 18 to 25, with both low and high level of response (LR) to alcohol.
“We found significant differences in brain activation between individuals with high and low levels of response to alcohol while performing a cognitive task, possibly reflecting difference in the amount of brain activity used to deal with a cognitive challenge,” said Marc A. Schuckit, MD, Distinguished Professor of Psychiatry at UC San Diego, who headed the study.
Progression of Lung Fibrosis Blocked in Mouse Model
Study points to a phosphorylation pathway that may contribute to the development of lung injury and fibrosis
A study by researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine may lead to a way to prevent the progression, or induce the regression, of lung injury that results from use of the anti-cancer chemotherapy drug Bleomycin. Pulmonary fibrosis caused by this drug, as well as Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis (IPF) from unknown causes, affect nearly five million people worldwide. No therapy is known to improve the health or survival of patients.
Their research shows that the RSK-C/EBPb phosphorylation pathway may contribute to the development of lung injury and fibrosis, and that blocking this phosphorylation – a regulatory mechanism in which proteins and receptors are switched on or off – improved Bleomycin-induced lung fibrosis in mice. The study appears on-line October 5 in Proceedings of the Library of Science (PloS ONE).
Bleomycin is a common chemotherapy drug used to treat many forms of cancer, according to study authors Martina Buck, PhD, associate professor of medicine, and Mario Chojkier, MD, professor of medicine, both researchers at UC San Diego Moores Cancer Center and the VA San Diego Healthcare System. “Unfortunately, use of Bleomycin has damaging side effects, including lung fibrosis. We are hopeful that this discovery could provide a way to stop such lung damage so that cancer patients could better tolerate this chemotherapy,” said Buck.
Previously inaccessible target sites may be reached for diagnosis and treatment using this material
Scientists at the University of California, San Diego have developed what they believe to be the first polymeric material that is sensitive to biologically benign levels of near infrared (NRI) irradiation, enabling the material to disassemble in a highly controlled fashion. The study represents a significant milestone in the area of light-sensitive material for non-invasive medical and biological applications. Their work is published on line this week in the journal Macromolecules.
“To the best of our knowledge, this is the only polymeric material specifically designed to break down in to small fragments in response to very low levels of NIR irradiation,” said Adah Almutairi, PhD, assistant professor at the UCSD Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences and director of the Laboratory of Bioresponsive Materials at UC San Diego. “The material was also shown to be well-tolerated in cells before and after irradiation. We think there is great potential for use in human patients, allowing previously inaccessible targets sites to be reached for both treatment and diagnosis.”
$5.9 Million Grant to UC San Diego for Paradigm-Shifting Diabetes Research
Kumar Sharma, MD, FAHA, professor of medicine at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine and director of the Center for Renal Translational Medicine, has received a $5.9 million grant from the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK), part of the National Institutes of Health, to study kidney complications related to type 1 and type 2 diabetes.
Renal complications of diabetes represent one of the major public health problems facing industrialized nations. In patients with type 1 diabetes, diabetic kidney disease is the leading cause of excess mortality.
