How do you discover new drugs against diseases such as cancer?
A commonly used modern method is to screen thousands of chemical compounds against genetically identical laboratory-grown cancer cells (cell lines), then track how those compounds alter the cells’ behavior or appearance (phenotype). For example, does exposure to a compound...
Despite Congressional mandates aimed at diversifying clinical research, little has changed in the last 30 years in both the numbers of studies that include minorities and the diversity of scientists being funded, according to a new analysis by researchers at UC San Francisco.
That lack of diversity could have a serious impact on our...
Reprinted courtesy of UCSF Magazine.
In the pediatric bone marrow transplant clinic, pharmacist Janel Boyle’s past and present collide.
She drifts past young patients—many of them infants and toddlers—and notes their beaming smiles and balding heads. Her gaze shifts to the parents, their expressions tense but hopeful....
Cataracts are the leading cause of blindness worldwide, the leading cause of vision loss in the United States, and cases are increasing with an aging population. Currently the condition can be treated with surgery—an expensive intervention that leaves most patients blinded in developing countries untreated.
A cataract occurs when the...
More than a quarter of all drugs work by targeting one of a large family of proteins called G-protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs). Hundreds of different GPCRs are embedded in cell membranes, converting stimuli from the outside world—neurotransmitters, hormones, even light—into intracellular signals that can change cell behavior.
There are...
In people with type 2 diabetes, the body is less able to use the hormone insulin to regulate blood sugar. The disease affects 350 million patients globally—including 29 million in the United States, where it is the leading cause of blindness, kidney failure, and non-accident-related amputations.
Metformin is the most widely used initial...
The research journey toward building a fully functioning, surgically implantable artificial kidney as an alternative to kidney transplant and dialysis just took another step forward with the announcement of a $6 million grant to The Kidney Project, headquartered at the UCSF School of Pharmacy. The funding comes from the National Institute of...
Nearly every human bacterial infection—including some of the most serious, life threatening, and costly to treat—can take the form of a biofilm, in which bacteria aggregate into structured communities that enclose themselves within a secreted slime.
Biofilms can be up to 1,000 times more resistant to antibiotics than free-swimming (...