It might or might not surprise you that some very strong private biomedical research institute funding at the University of California San Francisco campus comes from the father of the first enclosed southern California shopping mall, on the one hand, and the founder of Star Trek on the other. Those two innovative individuals, J. David Gladstone and Gene Roddenberry respectively, have left much of their considerable legacy to science research into understanding human disease. A year ago this time, the Gladstone Institutes welcomed the Roddenberry Foundation into its research family with the establishment of the Roddenberry Center for Stem Cell Biology and Medicine within the Gladstone walls on Owens Street in Mission Bay. Two months ago one of the Gladstone's senior research scientists won the Nobel Prize for his groundbreaking work with induced pluripotent stem cells. Those events, in conjunction with the 3 decades of research milestones made by their scientists, as well as their affiliation with UCSF and its world-class stem cell research program position the Gladstone solidly to meet their 21st Century mission goal:
Tags: CA, University of California San Francisco, Stem cell research, California, 2012, San Francisco, Biotechnology Vendor Showcase, UCSF, Gladstone Institutes, San Francisco at Mission Bay
The University of California system has five biomedical campuses currently: San Francisco, San Diego, Los Angeles, Irvine, and Davis/Sacramento. While each campus maintains a certain autonomy, the advantage to being part of a unified, statewide system is especially apparent when it comes to sharing resources such as biospecimens. In research studies that require data from large numbers of human blood or tissue samples, for instance, scientists rely on biobanks: an organized collection of human biological material and associated information stored for one or more research purposes.
Tags: CA, University of California Los Angeles, University of California San Francisco, Bioscience research, Bioresearch, Translational Research, Southwest, California, University of California, 2012, Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco, BioResearch Product Faire Event, Biotechnology Vendor Showcase
Funding makes laboratory research possible, which makes discovery possible, which leads to advancing knowledge and treatment options. But the primary job of a top scientist and lab director should not be to write grant proposals at the expense of time spent actually doing research. With that insight in mind, the University of California San Francisco put a system in place 5 years ago called the Resource Allocation Program (RAP). The function of the RAP is to streamline the intramural funding process so that faculty only have to fill out one application for many grants, and then only twice a year on set dates. A recent review of the program shows it to be a success, with a 66% increase in overall applications submitted and approximately a 20% increase in funding awarded in the past year alone.
Tags: CA, University of California San Francisco, biomedical research, 2012 Research Funding, Southwest, California, 2012, San Francisco, Funding, Biotechnology Vendor Showcase, UCSF, Biomedical Research Funding, Mission Bay Campus, UCSF Mission Bay
There is still no magic pill for the two-thirds of Americans who are overweight, but research into the cellular mechanism of fat production is turning up promising avenues for therapeutics that are closer than you might think. We mentioned "good brown fat" in a recent article on hormone research at Harvard. Scientists in the Diabetes Center and the Department of Cell and Tissue Biology at the University of California San Francisco, Parnassus Campus, are also looking at brown fat production as a treatment for obesity.
Tags: University of California San Francisco, cell biology, Diabetes, Southwest, California, San Francisco, Biotechnology Vendor Showcase, BVS
The San Francisco Bay Area is one of the largest, most successful established biotech hubs in the US, thanks in part to the presence of 3 of the world's top universities: UCSF, UC Berkeley, and Stanford. Strong on intellectual capital, the area has been notoriously short of real estate since developers were ordered to stop filling in the Bay back in the 60's. Fortunately, as manufacturing waned, industrial land became available for redevelopment as high-tech R&D lab space, which is how UCSF's Mission Bay campus eventually came to be. Across the Bay to the East, bayfront industrial property is seeing a similar repurposing, with particularly mushroom-like life science growth in the little city of Emeryville, though also in neighboring Berkeley and Richmond.
Tags: CA, University of California San Francisco, University of California Berkeley, Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, New research facilities, California, Berkeley, San Francisco, UCSF, new construction, National Lab, UC Berkeley, San Francisco Bay Area, San Francisco East Bay
The San Francisco Biotechnology Vendor Showase™ Event (BVS) at UCSF last Thursday saw sunshine, a wide variety of research products, and a range of exhibiting companies from Airgas Norpac to EMD Millipore Bioscience Division. And then there were the Science Ninjas....
Tags: University of California San Francisco, Southwest, California, San Francisco, Biotechnology Vendor Showcase, UCSF, Mission Bay Campus, science Ninja, BVS
Dr. Cynthia Kenyon and her colleagues at the University of California, San Francisco, started on an ambitious project two decades ago (much challenged at first): to combat age-related diseases by figuring out what the genetic basis is for aging itself. That research has produced results that have quite literally changed the terms of the debate, overturning the previous assumption that aging was haphazard and unrelated to genetic behavior. Thanks to Dr. Kenyon's determination to pursue her research, we now have several enticing keys to the way that bodies get old, or not, and we know that genes do in fact regulate the process of deterioration that tends to accompany aging. "Aging youthfully" might best describe the longterm aim of Kenyon's work, or "negligible senescence," meaning that age does not lead inevitably to decreased vigor and increased susceptibility to disease.
Tags: University of California San Francisco, gene therapy, California, UCSF
Germany has a long and illustrious history in photo-optics and many of its young scientists come to the U.S., and specifically to the University of California, San Francisco, to do their doctoral and post-doc work involving microscopy. Such was the case of Dr. Jan Huisken, who developed mSPIM technology while working in the UCSF biochemistry lab of Dr. Didier Stainier as a post-doc from 2005-2009.
Tags: University of California San Francisco, Photonics, cell biology, Microscopy, California, industry news
University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) is a standout leader among the world’s health science centers. For over thirty years the institution has taken a holistic approach, combining patient care, health education, and research. Here are four highlights that help distinguish UCSF’s as an outstanding leader for biomedical research.
Tags: University of California San Francisco, biomedical research, California, San Francisco, UCSF, Mission Bay Campus
UCSF, Mission Bay currently has over $1 Billion in construction projects underway, making it the largest ongoing biomedical building in the world and is one of the top NIH funded universities in the nation. Currently the school receives more federal funding than any other public university and is third overall among public and private institutions.
Tags: University of California San Francisco, California, UCSF, San Fransisco Science Researchers