News
July 16, 2009
UC San Diego NanoTumor Center and NanoTecNexus Win Telly Award for Educational Video
The University of California, San Diego NanoTumor Center and NanoTecNexus (NTN) (formerly NanoBioNexus)—a leading nanotech education organization—won the 2009 Bronze Telly Award for the production of a video on approaches to fighting cancer using nanotechnology. The three minute video, entitled “Fighting Cancer with Nanotechnology,” is embedded below and can be viewed at NanoTecNexus, YouTube and around the Web. Full Story
July 13, 2009
New Drugs Faster from Natural Compounds: a UC San Diego Breakthrough
Researchers have invented computational tools to decode and rapidly determine whether natural compounds collected in oceans and forests are new—or if these pharmaceutically promising compounds have already been described and are therefore not patentable. This University of California, San Diego advance will finally enable scientists to rapidly characterize ring-shaped nonribosomal peptides (NRPs)—a class of natural compounds of intense interest due to their potential to yield or inspire new pharmaceuticals. The study will be published in the July 13 online issue of journal Nature Methods. Full Story
July 7, 2009
Jacobs School Undergrads Go International this Summer with PRIME
Twenty four Jacobs School undergraduates are among the 33 University of California, San Diego undergraduates working as researchers in laboratories across the Pacific Rim and India this summer. Full Story
June 26, 2009
Bioengineering Grad Students are Finalists in $250K Global Business Plan Competition
University of California, San Diego bioengineering graduate students led by Raj Krishnan are among just 16 finalist teams from across the globe who will compete on June 30, 2009 for $250,000 in a global business plan competition. Full Story
June 16, 2009
At ENSPIRE Engineering Undergrads Inspire Local Eighth Graders
Imagine 420 eighth graders arriving at your doorstep and expecting you to inspire, teach, entertain and feed them all day. This is exactly the challenge the undergraduates from UC San Diego’s Jacobs School of Engineering took on earlier this year at ENSPIRE, one of the many events that make up Engineers Week at UC San Diego. Full Story
June 2, 2009
Cancer Diagnostics Startup from UC San Diego Bioengineering Win Entrepreneurship Competition
A team of bioengineering graduate students from the Jacobs School of Engineering won first place at the UC San Diego Entrepreneur Challenge for the business plan they built around their new early cancer diagnostic technology. The bioengineering students have already formed a startup company, Biological Dynamics, and they are currently seeking funding from investors. Full Story
May 29, 2009
How Oxidative Stress May Help Prolong Life
Oxidative stress has been linked to aging, cancer and other diseases in humans. Paradoxically, researchers have suggested that small exposure to oxidative conditions may actually offer protection from acute doses. Now, scientists at the University of California, San Diego, have discovered the gene responsible for this effect. Full Story
May 11, 2009
Technology for Early-Cancer Diagnosis Leads Bioengineering Grad Student to Many Prizes and a Startup Company
For breakthroughs aimed at early-stage cancer diagnostics, Raj Krishnan, a bioengineering Ph.D. student at the University of California, San Diego has taken home three first place awards at graduate research competitions this year. Not pausing to polish his awards, Krishnan has co-founded Biological Dynamics, a startup company aimed at transferring the new cancer diagnostic technology from the laboratory to the clinic. Full Story
April 22, 2009
New Method Developed by UC San Diego Bioengineers Gives Regenerative Medicine a Boost
Bioengineers at UC San Diego have developed a breakthrough method for sequencing-based methylation profiling, which could help fuel personalized regenerative medicine and even lead to more efficient and cost-effective methods for studying certain diseases. Full Story
April 20, 2009
How Cells Change Gears: New Insights Published in Nature Genetics
Bioinformatics researchers from UC San Diego just moved closer to unlocking the mystery of how human cells switch from “proliferation mode” to “specialization mode.” This computational biology work from the Jacobs School of Engineering’s bioengineering department could lead to new ideas for curbing unwanted cell proliferation—including some cancers. This research, published in Nature Genetics, could also improve our understanding of how organs and other complex tissues develop. Full Story