LA JOLLA, CA—The Salk Institute will co-lead a new transatlantic ‘Dream Team’ of researchers that will launch a fresh attack on pancreatic cancer, one of the deadliest forms of cancer on both sides of the Atlantic. Stand Up To Cancer (SU2C), Cancer Research UK, and The Lustgarten Foundation selected the team and will provide $12 million in funding over three years.
LA JOLLA–Salk Institute researchers have found that an experimental drug candidate aimed at combating Alzheimer’s disease has a host of unexpected anti-aging effects in animals.
LA JOLLA–Scientists at the Salk Institute have uncovered a molecule whose mutation leads to the aggressive growth of a common and deadly type of lung cancer in humans.
LA JOLLA–As concerns over deadly antibiotic-resistant strains of ‘superbug’ bacteria grow, scientists at the Salk Institute are offering a possible solution to the problem: ‘superhero’ bacteria that live in the gut and move to other parts of the body to alleviate life-threatening side effects caused by infections.
LA JOLLA–An insect lands on your arm, moving the tiny hairs on your skin just enough to make you want to scratch. Salk Institute researchers have uncovered evidence of a dedicated neural pathway that transmits the itchy feeling triggered by such a light touch.
LA JOLLA–The brain cells of patients with bipolar disorder, characterized by severe swings between depression and elation, are more sensitive to stimuli than other people’s brain cells, researchers have discovered.
LA JOLLA–Scientists have discovered a previously unknown wellspring of genetic diversity in humans, chimps and most other primates. This diversity arises from a new component of itinerant sections of genetic code known as jumping genes.
LA JOLLA–As food demands rise to unprecedented levels, farmers are in a race against time to grow plants that can withstand environmental challenges–infestation, climate change and more. Now, new research at the Salk Institute, published in Science on October 23, 2015, reveals details into a fundamental mechanism of how plants manage their energy intake, which could potentially be harnessed to improve yield.
LA JOLLA–Scientists have unraveled how mutant molecules damage the nervous system of people with Charcot-Marie-Tooth (CMT) disease, a group of disorders that hinder people’s ability to move and feel sensation in their hands and feet, according to a paper published October 21, 2015 in Nature.
LA JOLLA–Salk Fellows Dmitry Lyumkis and Patrick Hsu are among 16 scientists nationwide to receive the Director’s Early Independence Award from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The award supports junior scientists in their efforts to pursue innovative approaches to major contemporary challenges in biomedical research. Established in 2011, the Early Independence Award is part of the NIH’s High-Risk, High-Reward Research program, which encourages paradigm-shifting research projects that are inherently risky and untested.
LA JOLLA–The Society for Neuroscience (SfN), an organization of nearly 40,000 scientists and clinicians, will award the Swartz Prize for Theoretical and Computational Neuroscience to Terrence Sejnowski, Salk professor and head of the Computational Neurobiology Laboratory.
LA JOLLA–Salk Institute scientist Janelle Ayres has received an award of $500,000 over two years from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to further her research on bolstering a person’s microbiome to help their body overcome an infection. The award comes with the possibility of an additional $500,000 for a third year.
LA JOLLA–For the first time, scientists can use skin samples from older patients to create brain cells without rolling back the youthfulness clock in the cells first. The new technique, which yields cells resembling those found in older people’s brains, will be a boon to scientists studying age-related diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.
LA JOLLA–As part of a $120 million, 5-year initiative to understand the cell’s nucleus, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has awarded more than $30 million to San Diego researchers, including the Salk Institute and the University of California, San Diego (UC San Diego). Salk Associate Professor Clodagh O’Shea has been awarded a grant of $3 million over 5 years, along with the possibility of tapping into an additional opportunity pool of $3 million each year for the period.
LA JOLLA—The Salk Institute is pleased to announce the appointment of bioengineer Patrick Hsu in the innovative Salk Fellows Program. Hsu, who hails from Harvard University and MIT’s Broad Institute, aims to develop the next generation of medical therapeutics by harnessing the gene editing technology known as CRISPR. A gene editing technique originally derived from bacterial immune systems, CRISPR has recently made headlines for its use in modifying DNA with unprecedented ease and accuracy.
LA JOLLA–Breakfast, lunch and dinner? For too many of us, the three meals of the day go more like: morning meeting pastry, mid-afternoon energy drink and midnight pizza. In Cell Metabolism on September 24, Salk Institute scientists present daily food and beverage intake data collected from over 150 participants of a mobile research app over three weeks. They show that a majority of people eat for 15 hours or longer, with less than a quarter of the day’s calories being consumed before noon and over a third consumed after 6 p.m.
LA JOLLA-The National Institutes of Health has awarded a $13 million grant over five years to develop and disseminate new stem cell-based technologies and assays for studying autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and other mental health diseases to a consortium of researchers at the University of California, San Diego and the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, working in tandem with leaders in the biotechnology sector.
LA JOLLA–Since the early 19th century, scientists have worked to unravel the mystery of olfaction, our sense of smell.
LA JOLLA–By measuring how worms move toward an appealing, food-like scent, researchers at the Salk Institute were able to predict whether the worms would be long-lived. The finding, published September 22, 2015 in the journal eLife, shows how nematodes (Caenorhabditis elegans) process information about the environment and how circuits in the brain change as an animal ages.
Salk scientists John Reynolds, Ursula Bellugi and Alan Saghatelian have been honored with the dedication of three endowed chairs in acknowledgement of their outstanding contributions and dedication to scientific research. Bellugi and Reynolds were named inaugural holders of the Salk Founders’ Chair and Fiona and Sanjay Jha Chair in Neuroscience, respectively. Saghatalian was named holder of the Dr. Frederik Paulsen Chair in Neuroscience.
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