Research

Laura Marcu and Kent Leach have each received $1.8 million Tools and Technology Awards from the California Institute of Regenerative Medicine. The Tools and Technologies Awards are intended to create and test novel tools and technologies, to improve existing ones, and to help resolve bottlenecks that are impairing progress for the field.

The journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) has published research work conducted by the UC Davis Musculoskeletal Bioengineering Laboratory. The article, “Developing Functional Musculoskeletal Tissues Through Hypoxia and Lysyl Oxidase-Induced Collagen Cross-Linking,” is authored by Eleftherios A. Makris, Donald J.

The Centers for Disease Control estimate that typhoid fever affects 21.5 million people around the world each year, and the World Health Organization estimates it causes at least 600,000 deaths. Caused by the Salmonella Typhi bacterium, ingested in food or drink contaminated by the urine or feces of infected people, it is uncommon in regions with adequate sanitation and clean water. However, there are also around 7,500 cases in the United States annually. Globally, it remains a major health problem because it is difficult to eradicate.

A multi-institution team comprised of Jinyi Qi’s lab, West Virginia University (lead institution), GE Global Research, and the University of Washington has been awarded $1.5m to develop a wearable PET scanner for imaging the human brain in motion.

Harsha Radhakrishnan and Vivek Srinivasan wrote “Simply Shining a Light Can Reveal the Brain’s Structure” about their research on brain imaging for Scientific American’s “MIND Guest Blog”. 

Tiny, soapy bubbles can reorganize their membranes to let material flow in and out in response to the surrounding environment, according to new work carried out in an international collaboration by biomedical engineers at the University of California, Davis, and Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. This behavior could be exploited in creating microbubbles that deliver drugs or other payloads inside the body — and could help us understand how the very first living cells on Earth might have survived billions of years ago.

The UC Davis Comprehensive Cancer Center’s Brain Innovation Group has received a grant from the National Cancer Institute (NCI) to improve brain cancer surgery and treatment using UC Davis-developed biophotonic technology.

The $400,000 grant is the first for the cancer center’s eight cancer research innovation groups, which link scientists, oncologists, surgeons, engineers and other experts in discussions about patient care needs and potential innovations.

Ye Chen-Izu’s lab has received four new grants:

(1) American Heart Association grant 7/01/2014 – 6/30/2016 PI: Ye Chen-Izu

(2) Gilead Research Grant,  8/1/2014 – 5/30/2015 PI: Ye Chen-Izu

(3) Provost’s Undergraduate Fellowship Award to Rahwa Woldeyesus, UG student trainee in Chen-Izu’s lab

(4) IonOptix Travel Award to Rafael Shimkunas, Graduate student trainee in Chen-Izu’s lab.

Graduate students Pasha Hadidi of the Athanasiou Lab and Yu (Charlie) Ouyang of the Cherry Lab co-authors on a recently published Science paper “Total Synthesis of a Functional Designer Eukaryotic Chromosome” describing the world’s first synthetic eukaryotic chromosome.