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Gianna Dragatto, a young patient with a rare disease called Congenital Disorders of Glycosylation
Third Annual Rare Disease Day...

Join us in La Jolla, Calif. on February 24, 2012 for an exchange among all rare disease...

Drs. Reed and Lipton
Two Sanford-Burnham...

Our CEO John C. Reed, M.D., Ph.D., and Director of our Del E. Webb Neuroscience, Aging and Stem Cell...

Kristiina Vuori, M.D., Ph.D., Sanford-Burnham’s president and director of the Institute’s NCI-designated Cancer Center (Photo by Nadia Borowski Scott)
Sanford-Burnham joins Stand Up...

Sanford-Burnham's president, Kristiina Vuori, M.D., Ph.D., joins new Stand Up To Cancer “Dream...

Dr. Daniel Kelly, scientific director at Sanford-Burnham’s Lake Nona campus in Orlando, Fla. and senior author of the study
Super athletic mice burn more...

Dr. Daniel Kelly and colleagues show that generating energy from sugar leads to fitter muscles and...

New muscle research center opens in San Diego

by on January 27, 2012 at 6:23 am | 0 Comments
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The new San Diego Skeletal Muscle Research Center will be made up of three core facilities shared by five local reserach institutions.

The new San Diego Skeletal Muscle Research Center will be made up of three core facilities shared by five local reserach institutions.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) recently awarded a new grant to establish the San Diego Skeletal Muscle Research Center. This new center, led by UC San Diego’s Rick Lieber, Ph.D., Sanford-Burnham’s Mark Mercola, Ph.D., and The Scripps Research Institute’s Velia Fowler, Ph.D., will allow 21 scientists at five different research institutions to combine their expertise and state-of-the-art methods to accelerate  research that advances our understanding of skeletal muscles and the diseases that affect them.

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The momentum continues

by on January 26, 2012 at 9:10 am | 0 Comments
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Dr. John Reed

Dr. John Reed speaks to the Sanford-Burnham community at his State of the Institute address.

Each January, John Reed, Sanford-Burnham’s CEO, reviews the accomplishments of the previous year in his State of the Institute address, which he presents to our community at both our Orlando and San Diego locations. This year, he reflected not just on 2011, but on the past decade. It was 10 years ago—in January 2002—that Reed was first named CEO. An accomplished scientist in his own right, Reed has led the Institute during a period of tremendous growth.

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Attacking “bad carbs” to fight ovarian cancer

by on January 20, 2012 at 10:15 am | 0 Comments
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Michiko Fukuda, Ph.D. (Photo by Nadia Borowski Scott)

Michiko Fukuda, Ph.D. (Photo by Nadia Borowski Scott)

Carbohydrates are not only found in many of the foods that we love to eat (think bread and pasta), they also coat the surfaces of all cells in the body. What’s more, when a healthy cell becomes a cancer cell, the surface carbohydrates (also known as glycoproteins) are sometimes altered in a way that can contribute to tumor growth and metastasis.

Glycobiology, the study of glycoproteins and their role in human health, is a relatively underappreciated scientific field. But identifying cancer cell glycoproteins and understanding their part in cancer is a focus of Michiko Fukuda, Ph.D.’s laboratory. As she puts it, “Many people don’t want to think a lot about carbohydrates.”

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Third Annual Rare Disease Day Symposium: February 24

by on January 18, 2012 at 1:35 pm | 0 Comments
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Gianna Dragatto, a young patient with a rare disease called Congenital Disorders of Glycosylation

Gianna Dragatto, a young patient with a rare disease called Congenital Disorders of Glycosylation

What: Sanford-Burnham’s Third Annual Sanford-Burnham Rare Disease Day Symposium: Identifying and Treating Genetic Diseases in Children
Where: Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute, La Jolla, Calif., Building 12 (map)
When: February 24, 2012 – registration opens at 8:00 a.m. PT, program begins at 9:00 a.m. PT
Keynote speaker: Dr. Eric Green, director of the National Human Genome Research Institute

Program and free registration: click here
Symposium flyer: download PDF
Can’t make it? Submit your genetic disease-related questions for panel discussion to Nick at nburchfi@sanfordburnham.org. The symposium will be recorded and available on Sanford-Burnham’s website shortly after the event.

Sanford-Burnham’s successful series of Rare Disease Day symposia is based on the concept that treatment of rare diseases requires participation and exchange among all stakeholders—scientists, physicians, affected patients and their families, support groups, granting agencies, industry, and philanthropists. This year’s event, organized by Hudson Freeze, Ph.D., will focus on glycosylation-based disorders.

A few highlights:

  • Attendance by several children with Congenital Disorders of Glycosylation who are now benefiting from new therapies
  • Lunchtime panel discussion for patients and researchers
  • Presentation by patient advocacy group
  • Discussion of how one rare disorder relates to Parkinson’s disease

Video and media coverage of last year’s event are available here. For more information about Rare Disease Day USA (February 29, 2012), visit the National Organization for Rare Disorders.

Muscling up with MyoD

by on January 13, 2012 at 8:49 am | 1 comment
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Lorenzo Puri

Dr. Lorenzo Puri in his laboratory

Every cell in your body contains the same DNA, with genes coding for many thousands of proteins. Yet a muscle cell makes a very different set of proteins from say, a bone cell, enabling it to perform its muscle-specific job. Lorenzo Puri, M.D., Ph.D. and his lab members study what makes stem cells (precursor cells) choose to produce the proteins that turn them into muscle cells. In doing so, they hope their research will one day help improve strategies for muscle regeneration in patients with muscle wasting diseases, such as muscular dystrophy. While a cure for muscular dystrophy is not yet in sight, the ability to stimulate muscle stem cells to generate mature muscle cells could make a big difference in the lives of patients. By repairing muscles damaged by the disease, muscle regeneration therapy would extend the lives of patients and allow them to function effectively in a whole range of activities that are currently unthinkable for victims of the disease.

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What would Nature do?

by on January 11, 2012 at 8:54 am | 0 Comments
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Giovanni Paternostro, M.D., Ph.D. and his research group think Nature might have the answer to designing more effective therapies that are less likely to result in resistance: the many-to-many approach.

Giovanni Paternostro, M.D., Ph.D. and his research group think Nature might have the answer to designing more effective therapies that are less likely to result in resistance: the many-to-many approach.

We all want to find the next miracle drug—especially the one that will cure an ailing loved one. But it can take researchers a long time—decades, sometimes—to discover and develop new medicines. Not only do scientists and doctors hope to create a therapy that works well, but it can’t cause too many side-effects. And even then, after all that time and effort to move the therapy from the lab bench to the patient’s bedside, the drug might stop working after a few months if the patient develops resistance to it.

How can we overcome this final hurdle?

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Sanford-Burnham experts talk about why Americans are fat

by on January 6, 2012 at 10:11 am | 0 Comments
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Fireworks over the Sydney Opera House

Fireworks over the Sydney Opera House

New Year’s resolutions and dieting seem to go hand-in-hand. Setting a personal goal to lose weight and exercise more may jump-start the New Year but “February frustration” can derail even the most determined. Scientists in Sanford-Burnham’s Diabetes and Obesity Research Center recently shared their expertise on the causes of weight gain and the metabolic challenges that make it so hard to keep off the extra pounds. Their insights on genetics, diet, metabolism and lifestyle were included in a four-part series called “What’s making Americans so fat?” that ran in the Orlando Sentinel beginning January 1. Medical reporter Marni Jameson spoke with national obesity experts to compile a list of 40 reasons for why 60 percent of U.S. adults are obese or overweight.

“It’s not gluttony, and it’s not lack of willpower,” says Dr. Steven Smith, scientific director of the Florida Hospital – Sanford-Burnham Translational Research Institute for Metabolism and Diabetes. “No scientist in the field will say the problem is strictly one of willpower,” he says. “It’s a result of the way our genes are interacting with an environment that is stacked against them.”

Here’s an excerpt of how the experts weighed in:

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All weight gain is not the same

by on January 4, 2012 at 2:09 pm | 0 Comments
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Steven R. Smith, M.D.

Steven R. Smith, M.D.

Malnutrition in its many forms remains a world-wide epidemic. In the United States, more than 60 percent of adults are classified as overweight or obese, whereas third-world nations are struggling with under-nutrition and insufficient food supplies. A new study provides scientific insight that may benefit development of public health policy to influence healthy weight gain.

The study, published January 4 in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), examines the impact of diets containing varying amounts of protein on weight gain, body composition, and energy expenditure. The research, led by Sanford-Burnham’s Steven R. Smith, M.D. and George Bray, M.D., Pennington Biomedical Research Center, found that total calories account for increases in body fat, while increasing the percent of dietary protein during overfeeding led to more lean body mass storage. This work appears to be the first to analyze the impact of dietary protein during overfeeding and provides guidance on dietary composition for healthy weight gain.

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Top 11 of 2011

by on December 31, 2011 at 5:40 am | 0 Comments
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Torrey Pines State Beach, across the street from Sanford-Burnham's La Jolla campus (Photo by Christine Lammer)

Torrey Pines State Beach, across the street from Sanford-Burnham's La Jolla campus (Photo by Christine Lammer)

As 2011 draws to a close, we look back on our top 11 most popular blog posts published in 2011. Here they are…enjoy!

  1. How fatty diets cause diabetes
  2. Witnessing the birth of a new scientific field
  3. Two-faced nanoparticles and cancer
  4. Fighting fat with fat
  5. Crunching the proteome
  6. Science careers: from postdoc to PI
  7. Students find summer training opportunities close to home
  8. How cells sense nutrients and fuel cancer cell growth
  9. Getting to the root of Alzheimer’s disease
  10. What is “Disease in a Dish?”
  11. A new stem cell enters the mix

Five reasons to make a year-end gift to Sanford-Burnham

by on December 26, 2011 at 5:48 am | 0 Comments
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Sanford-Burnham researchers

Researchers envision a brighter future for people suffering from disease. You can help.

As you look back on 2011, what are you grateful for? What are your hopes for 2012? Help us make the new year a year of advances in medical research. Here are five reasons to make a tax-deductible gift by December 31.
 

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Happy holidays from Sanford-Burnham!

by on December 24, 2011 at 5:25 am | 0 Comments
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See our scientists and staff spread holiday cheer in their native languages.

Two Sanford-Burnham researchers named AAAS Fellows

by on December 23, 2011 at 6:00 am | 0 Comments
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Drs. Reed and Lipton

Dr. John Reed and Dr. Stuart Lipton

Sanford-Burnham is a highly collaborative institute, embracing opportunities to connect with scientists nationwide, so perhaps the greatest honor our researchers can receive is the recognition of their peers. Our CEO John C. Reed, M.D., Ph.D., and Director of our Del E. Webb Neuroscience, Aging and Stem Cell Research Center, Stuart A. Lipton, M.D., Ph.D., have been named as Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Fellows are recognized for meritorious efforts to advance science or its applications. This year’s honorees were formally announced today in the AAAS News & Notes section of the journal Science.

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Sanford-Burnham joins Stand Up To Cancer Dream Team

by on December 13, 2011 at 9:01 pm | 1 comment
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Kristiina Vuori, M.D., Ph.D., Sanford-Burnham’s president and director of the Institute’s NCI-designated Cancer Center (Photo by Nadia Borowski Scott)

Kristiina Vuori, M.D., Ph.D., Sanford-Burnham’s president and director of the Institute’s NCI-designated Cancer Center (Photo by Nadia Borowski Scott)

Sanford-Burnham’s president, Kristiina Vuori, M.D., Ph.D., was named today as part of a new “Dream Team” to find innovative new ways to fight melanoma using a personalized medicine approach.

The Dream Team researchers will receive three years of funding from Stand Up To Cancer and the Melanoma Research Alliance. The newly funded project, which will receive a grant of $6 million, will not only explore a personalized medicine approach to treating metastatic melanoma, but may also lay the groundwork for fighting many other tumor and disease types. Stand Up To Cancer is a program of the Entertainment Industry Foundation, a charitable organization that has raised more than $100 million for cancer research in the past two years, much of it in connection with nationally televised fundraising specials.

“This is a test case to determine whether personalized medicine can become a reality. It’s our hope to be able to treat a patient with melanoma based on that person’s own molecular profile—an approach that’s likely to be more effective and have fewer side effects than current treatments,” said Vuori, who also directs Sanford-Burnham’s National Cancer Institute-designated Cancer Center. “Most importantly, our approach may represent improved survival for this patient group that currently has limited treatment options.”

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Sanford-Burnham’s “Two Cultures”

by on December 8, 2011 at 4:06 pm | 0 Comments
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Charles Percy Snow (1905-1980), English author, physicist, and diplomat (Image by ©Bettmann/CORBIS)

Charles Percy Snow (1905-1980), English author, physicist, and diplomat (Image by ©Bettmann/CORBIS)

A member of Sanford-Burnham’s faculty reflects on history, philosophy, society, and what it takes to get science done.

In 1959 the British physicist C.P. Snow delivered a lecture, and subsequently published a monograph, entitled “The Two Cultures,” describing what he saw as a growing divide between science and the humanities. Snow was afraid that science, spurred by the success of Sputnik, the resulting space race, the growth of nuclear technologies, and the very beginnings of the revolution in molecular genetics, would produce a culture that was impenetrable to non-scientists and in which scientists would be so specialized that they lacked the ability to connect with the rest of society. The publication was assigned reading for many university students at that time, and triggered many discussions about the balance between science and other aspects of society. Partly as a result of such discussions, a number of institutions of higher education were motivated to realign their curricula to make sure that science majors still learned about the roots of western civilization, including literature, art, and philosophy (with notable lack of foresight, nobody was thinking much about Asia in those days!). Oddly, in many cases this adjustment was not balanced by corresponding requirements that humanities students enroll in introductory science courses. These questions of academic focus have continued to be a source of debate, as universities continually struggle to balance their arts versus science programs.

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How a few extra mice prompted a diabetes collaboration

by on December 5, 2011 at 8:59 am | 0 Comments
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insulin-producing beta-cells in a mouse pancreas (Image courtesy of Edward Monosov)

insulin-producing beta-cells in a mouse pancreas (Image courtesy of Edward Monosov)

Dr. Barbara Ranscht and her lab are working to better understand how T-cadherin—a protein found on the surface of neurons, muscle, and other cells—regulates communication between cells during development and disease. The best way to go about this is to see what happens when the protein is missing. To do this, her lab developed a mouse model that lacks the protein altogether. Using these animals, Dr. Ranscht’s group has revealed that T-cadherin protects the stressed heart and is necessary for new blood vessel growth in injury models.

One day, Dr. Ranscht found herself discussing possible roles for T-cadherin in metabolism with Sanford-Burnham colleagues Dr. Björn Tyrberg and Dr. Fred Levine. The researchers especially wondered about T-cadherin’s role in the pancreas (Drs. Tyrberg’s and Levine’s organ of expertise).

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