University of California San Francisco
Give to UCSF
<p>Many researchers are finding that by the time a patient seeks treatment for symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease, it’s often too late for the available drugs to have an effect. Boxer’s lab is studying very precise eye tracking methods to gauge mental fitness and identify cognitive decline decades before the first symptoms appear.</p>
<p>By mapping neurons and neuron circuitry during movement, Sabes’ lab hopes to one day to be able to print this information back into the brain. If feasible, such therapy could offer new hope to stroke victims whose brains are unable to recover on their own.</p>
<p>Each year, scores of soldiers wounded by explosives suffer from debilitating nerve injuries that render their arms and legs useless. Kim’s research, performed at the UCSF-affiliated San Francisco Veterans Affairs hospital, has led to development of artificial nerve grafts to accelerate healing of these injuries.</p>
<p>Scientists are making great strides in figuring out how the human brain develops, which are leading to novel ideas about the causes of a range of brain disorders, and are raising hopes for the regeneration of tissue that is lost in diseases such as Alzheimer’s. </p>
Scientists at UCSF have pinpointed a reason older adults have a harder time multitasking than younger adults: they have more difficulty switching between tasks at the level of brain networks.
Parkinson’s disease researcher Robert Nussbaum, a human geneticist and neuroscientist at UCSF, has been named to receive the prestigious Klaus Joachim Zülch Neuroscience Prize for 2011.
For patients with glioma, the most common primary brain tumor, new findings may explain why current therapies fail to eradicate the cancer. A UCSF-led team of scientists has identified for the first time that progenitor rather than neural stem cells underly a type of glioma called oligodendroglioma.
UCSF Nobel laureate Stanley Prusiner, MD, and colleagues have called for Congress to more than quadruple annual federal funding for Alzheimer’s research, saying that with a dedicated effort, there is a chance for a breakthrough against the disease by 2020.
UCSF scientists have received two grants from the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine to refine their human embryonic stem cell-based strategies for treating neurological diseases and liver failure.
UCSF Nobel laureate Stanley B. Prusiner, professor of neurology and director of the Institute for Neurodegenerative Diseases, today (Oct. 15, 2010) was named to receive the National Medal of Science, the nation’s highest honor for science and technology.