LA JOLLA—The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) recently announced that Salk Institute Professor Vicki Lundblad is one of 84 new members to be elected to the NAS. The election is considered one of the highest honors accorded a U.S. scientist. Lundblad’s recognition brings the number of Salk faculty elected to the NAS to 14.
LA JOLLA–For thousands of women around the globe carrying a mitochondrial disease, having a healthy child can be a gamble. This set of diseases affect mitochondria, tiny powerhouses that generate energy in the body’s cells and are passed exclusively from mother to child.
LA JOLLA–Salk Institute Professors Joseph Ecker and Dennis O’Leary have received the prestigious honor of being elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (AAAS) class of 2015. One of the nation’s most prominent honorary societies, AAAS are among the 197 accomplished leaders from academia, business, public affairs, the humanities and the arts accepted to this year’s class. Its members include winners of the Nobel Prize and Pulitzer Prize; MacArthur and Guggenheim Fellowships; and Grammy, Emmy, Oscar and Tony Awards.
LA JOLLA–If you had 10 chances to roll a die, would you rather be guaranteed to receive $5 for every roll ($50 total) or take the risk of winning $100 if you only roll a six?
LA JOLLA–Just as some people seem built to run marathons and have an easier time going for miles without tiring, others are born with a knack for memorizing things, from times tables to trivia facts. These two skills–running and memorizing–are not so different as it turns out.
The Salk Institute will open its doors to the community Saturday, April 11, for the third annual Explore Salk, a once-a-year event featuring staff-guided lab tours, self-guided architectural tours, science booths and talks by eminent Salk researchers. Family friendly activities include a Kids’ Discovery Zone, a mobile science lab with hands-on experiments and a virtual lab tour with a Q&A session for preteens interested in pursuing a career in science.
LA JOLLA–For infants with severe combined immunodeficiency (SCID), something as simple as a common cold or ear infection can be fatal. Born with an incomplete immune system, kids who have SCID–also known as “bubble boy” or “bubble baby” disease–can’t fight off even the mildest of germs. They often have to live in sterile, isolated environments to avoid infections and, even then, most patients don’t live past a year or two. This happens because stem cells in SCID patients’ bone marrow have a genetic mutation that prevents them from developing critical immune cells, called T and Natural Killer (NK) cells.
LA JOLLA–Imagine a single drug that could prevent human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection, treat patients who have already contracted HIV, and even remove all the dormant copies of the virus from those with the more advanced disease. It sounds like science fiction, but Salk scientists have gotten one step closer to creating such a drug by customizing a powerful defense system used by many bacteria and training this scissor-like machinery to recognize the HIV virus.
LA JOLLA–Tony Hunter, professor and director of the Salk Institute Cancer Center, in La Jolla, California, has received the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in the Biomedicine category for “carving out the path that led to the development of a new class of successful cancer drugs.”
LA JOLLA–Walking across an icy parking lot in winter–and remaining upright–takes intense concentration. But a new discovery suggests that much of the balancing act that our bodies perform when faced with such a task happens unconsciously, thanks to a cluster of neurons in our spinal cord that function as a “mini-brain” to integrate sensory information and make the necessary adjustments to our muscles so that we don’t slip and fall.
LA JOLLA–Salk researchers have developed an entirely new type of pill that tricks the body into thinking it has consumed calories, causing it to burn fat. The compound effectively stopped weight gain, lowered cholesterol, controlled blood sugar and minimized inflammation in mice, making it an excellent candidate for a rapid transition into human clinical trials.
LA JOLLA–You’ve misplaced your cell phone. You start by scanning where you remember leaving it: on your bureau. You check and double-check the bureau before expanding your search around and below the bureau. Eventually, you switch from this local area to a more global one, widening your search to the rest of your room and beyond.
LA JOLLA–The Salk Institute is pleased to announce the election of Richard A. Heyman, PhD, to its Board of Trustees. Heyman currently serves as CEO of Seragon Pharmaceuticals, a San Diego-based biotech company that he co-founded in August 2013. Seragon develops selective estrogen receptor degraders (SERDs), which are being used for the treatment of breast cancer.
LA JOLLA–Pain typically has a clear cause–but not always. When a person touches something hot or bumps into a sharp object, it’s no surprise that it hurts. But for people with certain chronic pain disorders, including fibromyalgia and phantom limb pain, a gentle caress can result in agony.
LA JOLLA–These days, with the abundance of artificial light, TV, tablets and smartphones, adults and children alike are burning the midnight oil. What they are not burning is calories: with later bedtimes comes the tendency to eat.
LA JOLLA–Taking a single snapshot of all the bacteria that live in a mouse’s–or person’s–stomach and intestines can capture the health of the organism’s digestive system and even their risk of developing immune diseases and cancers. But it might take more than one snapshot to get a full picture, Salk researchers have discovered.
Janelle Ayres, Salk assistant professor in the Nomis Foundation Laboratories for Immunobiology and Microbial Pathogenesis, has been selected to receive the prestigious Ray Thomas Edwards Foundation Career Development Award. Only one three-year grant is conferred annually, aiming to foster the development of a promising early career biomedical researcher in San Diego County and to help him or her make the transition to becoming an independent investigator.
LA JOLLA–For decades, researchers have struggled to translate basic scientific discoveries about cancer into therapeutics that effectively–and with minimal side effects–shrink a tumor.
LA JOLLA–Scientists at the Salk Institute have discovered a powerful one-two punch for countering a common genetic mutation that often leads to drug-resistant cancers. The dual-drug therapy–with analogs already in use for other diseases–doubled the survival rate of mice with lung cancer and halted cancer in pancreatic cells.
LA JOLLA–Researchers at the Salk Institute have healed injured hearts of living mice by reactivating long dormant molecular machinery found in the animals’ cells, a finding that could help pave the way to new therapies for heart disorders in humans.
