School of Medicine Dean Delivers Budget Update

University of California San Francisco
Scientists at UCSF have discovered an abnormality in a patient’s immune system that may lead to safer therapies for autoimmune diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis and colitis, as well as potential new ways to treat transplant rejection.
The rate of sudden deaths increased six-fold in the first year that California law enforcement agencies deployed the use of stun guns, according to a UCSF study. Findings also showed a two-fold increase in the rate of firearm-related deaths during the same time period.
With support from the Fogarty International Center, the UCSF School of Nursing is examining the impact of stigma as it relates to nurses who care for HIV patients in developing countries.
Faculty are invited to submit an application for the next round of funding by March 2 in the Resource Allocation Program.
Drug side effects have been sidelining already-approved drugs. New inventions by Laurence Tecott, MD, PhD, and Evan Goulding, MD, PhD, allow monitoring of complex mouse behaviors and may yield early warnings of possible pharmaceutical side effects. Big Pharma and biotech drug development should benefit as a result.
MicroRNA inhibitors of genes reveal their targets in a UCSF Kaposi’s sarcoma study. Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator Don Ganem leads efforts to find guiding principles that will point to the targets of microRNA in health and disease.
A 3-year-old who lost his hearing in a US missile attack receives a cochlear implant at UCSF after a massive fundraising effort and outpouring of support his father calls “beyond my imagination.”
Faculty who are going to the inauguration of Barack Obama on Jan. 20 are feeling optimistic about the future.
A 3-year-old Iraqi boy will undergo surgery at UCSF Medical Center today (Friday, January 16), to restore his hearing, which was destroyed in June 2007 when a U.S. explosive device hit his neighbor’s house.
A team of UCSF researchers has discovered a protein duo that regulates the formation of endothelial cells – a breakthrough that has significant scientific and therapeutic implications.
Acting on the recommendation of University of California President Mark G. Yudof, the UC Board of Regents today (Jan. 14) approved plans curtailing undergraduate enrollment growth, and freezing the salaries of top administrators and significantly restricting compensation for a large group of senior leadership.
The pharmaceutical company Parke-Davis employed “the systematic use of deception and misinformation” in order to manipulate physicians into prescribing the drug gabapentin for so-called off-label uses, write two San Francisco VA Medical Center physicians in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Chancellor Mike Bishop, who will step down from the top post in June, delivered his final annual report on Tuesday, citing many accomplishments over the past year and thanking 18,000 employees for their service to UCSF.
Application forms will be accepted through March 2 for the position of staff advisor-designate to the UC Board of Regents.
Fourth-year student Ashish Patel has worked tirelessly at both the local and national level to inspire youth from all backgrounds to consider careers in medicine or science.
Consider the lab mouse. The rodent is used to model tumor growth in countless studies of genes and cancer. About 99 percent of mouse genes also appear in humans. Mouse and human also are similar when one compares the DNA code within these genes. Mice get cancer, and they get more cancer when genetically engineered with human cancer-causing genes.
UCSF researchers have used a new strategy to study inherited susceptibility for skin cancer in mice. In the process, they have identified a network of genes that may play a key role in controlling this susceptibility. The technique, the scientists say, could be used to identify such genes in human cancers.
New research published in the scientific journal Nature this week strongly suggests that underappreciated cells of the immune system, called natural killers, play a more important role than previously thought when it comes to fighting viruses that cause chronic disease – including a common herpesvirus called CMV, and perhaps HIV, hepatitis C and many others.
New UCSF Faculty, January 2009
New UCSF Faculty, January 2009