University of California San Francisco
Give to UCSF
UCSF scientists have used a novel cell-based strategy to treat motor symptoms in rats with a disease designed to mimic Parkinson’s disease. The strategy suggests a promising approach, the scientists say, for treating symptoms of Parkinson’s disease and other neurodegenerative diseases and disorders, including epilepsy.
UCSF scientists report that they were able to prompt a new period of “plasticity,” or capacity for change, in the neural circuitry of the visual cortex of juvenile mice.
Taking an innovative path toward personalized medicine, scientists for the first time will be able to eliminate – at an early point in a clinical trial — experimental drugs that show poor efficacy, dramatically shortening the time it takes to get the right medication to the right patient with breast cancer.
People are paying close attention to pediatric endocrinologist Robert Lustig’s message that the obesity epidemic can be blamed on a marked increase in the consumption of a type of sugar called fructose.
UCSF scientists have discovered how a mutated gene known as Kras is able to hijack mouse cells damaged by acute pancreatitis, putting them on the path to becoming pancreatic cancer cells.
A panel of experts appointed by Mayor Gavin Newsom recently presented an action plan as the approaching “age wave may bring a potential crisis in Alzheimer’s and dementia care” to San Francisco.
A specific region of the hippocampus, a brain structure that is essential to memory, is significantly smaller in veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder than in those without the condition, according to a study by researchers at the San Francisco VA Medical Center and UCSF.
UCSF nephrologist Flavio Vincenti, MD, is the lead author of a paper in the March 2010 issue of the <i>American Journal of Transplantation</i> that reports results from a Phase III clinical trial for a new drug that selectively blocks immune suppression for kidney transplants. The drug, belatacept, is given to kidney-transplant recipients to prevent the immune system from rejecting the new organ. Vincenti and his co-investigators found that belatacept may be as effective as the commonly used anti-rejection drug cyclosporine, but with fewer side effects and superior kidney function after 12 months.
Two UCSF scientists have been selected for the American Academy of Neurology’s prestigious Potamkin Prize, for their “outstanding achievements” in research on dementias.
A UCSF team, led by bioethicist Bernard Lo, MD, recommends that the National Institutes of Health ethics guidelines for embryonic stem cell research be modified to better protect the rights of individuals donating egg or sperm to patients undergoing in vitro fertilization.
Researchers, who are interested in taking their research from the bench to the bedside, are encouraged to apply for a catalyst award by March 1.
UCSF Chancellor Susan Desmond-Hellmann outlines a vision for faster development of better, cheaper drugs to fight cancer.
Shinya Yamanaka, a scientist who reprogrammed adult cells into embryonic-like stem cells, has been chosen to receive the 2010 March of Dimes Prize in Developmental Biology.
Scientists have identified a gene family that plays a key role in one of the earliest stages of development in which an embryo distinguishes its left side from the right and determines how organs should be positioned within the body. The finding in mice likely will lead to a better understanding of how certain birth defects occur in humans.