Success Stories
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Stefan Habelitz, PhD
About 1/5 of the US population over 65 is edentulous and about 3% of the total population has at least one missing tooth. Current treatment options include dental bridges, implants and dentures, but regeneration of teeth might be a possibility in the near future as scientists have regrown teeth in several small animal models. The two main challenges to overcome for human tooth regeneration is the lack of suitable stem cells of the epithelium and the length of process of tooth development, which takes between 4 and 8 years from initial tooth bud to eruption, depending on tooth type. In a previous Individual Investigator Grant by UCSF-RAP we initiated studies to develop micropatterned membranes which will preposition dental cells comparable to their arrangement during tooth development and are designed to produce enamel and dentin in-vitro and before implantation in a site of a lost tooth. These studies provided the data for an application of a R21 which was funded by the NIDCR. A Professional Developmental Leave Award by UCSF-RAP is now supporting my efforts to investigate suitable stem cell sources, including embryonic and IPS cells, at the Healy Lab in Bioengineering at UC Berkeley.
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Lianxing Liu, PhD
The RAP – Basic Science Award Program in HIV/AIDS I recently received will enable us to characterize a newly identified anti-HIV protein produced by CD8+ T cells. This anti-HIV protein has potential clinical application for the treatment of HIV-1 infected individuals. By completing this project, we will not only add valuable information to the HIV/AIDS field, but we can also start a new area of scientific research, evaluating the full role of naturally found antiviral factors in HIV pathogenesis.
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Shivani Tripathi, MD
With the RAP award from the Cancer Center-Center for AIDS Research (CC-CFAR), our team of clinicians and researchers in the Department of Dermatology aim to further understand the mechanism behind the increase and aggressive nature of cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma (cSCC) that is causing significant morbidity and mortality in the HIV infected population with well-controlled disease on Highly Active Anti-Retroviral Treatment (HAART). cSCC, as well as other Non-AIDS defining malignancies (NADMs), have increased more than three-fold since 1995 in HIV+ patients whose disease is well- controlled on HAART, while AIDS-defining cancers including Kaposi Sarcoma, non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, and cervical cancer, have declined by three fold in the same time frame. Though the burden of cSCC and other NADMs is increasing, little is known about the pathogenesis. We hypothesize that a mechanism distinct from immunosuppression may be contributing, such as 'immune aging' or immunosenescence, and concomitant involvement of HPV, and will use cSCC as a model to understand the increase in NADMs. With this award, we can continue our work to better understand and care for patients living with HIV in the era of HAART, specifically to further understand the increase in NADMs non-AIDS defining malignancies that are leading to significant morbidity and mortality.
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Lydia B. Zablotska, MD, PhD
Our RAP award for Multidisciplinary Research Project Planning is supported by the CTSI-Strategic Opportunities Support (SOS) Program. It will enable us to organize a meeting of UCSF, domestic and foreign radiation epidemiology experts and collaborators from other disciplines to discuss and prepare several multidisciplinary NIH grant applications. One of the proposed grants will pool the data from our study of leukemia in Chornobyl cleanup workers with the study conducted by cancer researchers from the International Agency for Research on Cancer, Lyon, France. This meeting will also allow us to develop plans to apply for a multidisciplinary R01-type grant to extend the follow-up of the cohort of Ukrainian cleanup workers for hematological malignancies to 30 years (1986-2016). Both grant proposals will build upon our previous studies and expand them by including the following new outcomes and directions: multiple myeloma and non-Hodgkin lymphoma; genetic studies of both heritable and somatic mutations and gene-radiation interactions; new statistical methods for dose-response analyses to provide more accurate radiation risk estimates. Going forward, this new line of research will allow for risk projection analyses of low-dose ionizing radiation exposures such as CT scans. Proposed studies will address many knowledge gaps on radiation-related risks of hematological malignancies, with clear translational implications for practice. We believe that this meeting will enhance the competitiveness of our research team in terms of obtaining future funding for this research.
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