News Archive
August 9, 2017
Nature Names UC San Diego a Top 15 Research Institution Worldwide
The University of California San Diego is the world’s 14th best university for developing research that is used to create products or services that benefit society and spur economic growth. The new rankings by Nature, one of the world’s leading academic journals, also praise the campus for its research output: nearly half of UC San Diego’s natural science papers appear in the Nature index, which measures research productivity in the globe’s top science journals. Full Story
August 2, 2017
Engineers harness the power of 3D printing to help train surgeons, shorten surgery times
A team of engineers and pediatric orthopedic surgeons are using 3D printing to help train surgeons and shorten surgeries for the most common hip disorder found in children ages 9 to 16. In a recent study, researchers showed that allowing surgeons to prep on a 3D-printed model of the patient’s hip joint cut by about 25 percent the amount of time needed for surgery when compared to a control group. The team, which includes bioengineers from the University of California San Diego and physicians from Rady Children’s Hospital, detailed their findings in a recent issue of the Journal of Children’s Orthopaedics. Full Story
July 10, 2017
Scientists at the UC San Diego Center for Microbiome Innovation invent new tool for the Synthetic Biologist's toolbox
Researchers at the University of California San Diego have invented a new method for controlling gene expression across bacterial colonies. The method involves engineering dynamic DNA copy number changes in a synchronized fashion. The results were published in the July 10, 2017 online edition of Nature Genetics. Full Story
May 10, 2017
Bioengineering Professor Christian Metallo Receives 2017 Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award
Christian Metallo, a bioengineering professor at the University of California San Diego, has been named a Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar. Metallo is one of 13 faculty members nationwide to receive the honor from the Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation. Full Story
May 8, 2017
Engineered bone marrow could make transplants safer
Engineers at the University of California San Diego have developed biomimetic bone tissues that could one day provide new bone marrow for patients needing transplants. Full Story
May 2, 2017
UC San Diego Researchers Selected for IBM Watson AI XPRIZE Competition
A team of researchers at the University of California San Diego has been selected to take part in the IBM Watson AI XPRIZE ®. The competition aims to accelerate the development and adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies that are truly scalable and have the capacity to solve grand challenges facing society. Full Story
April 24, 2017
Nanoparticles for treating bacterial infections take top prize at Research Expo 2017
B.J. (Byungji) Kim, a materials science and engineering graduate student at the University of California San Diego, won the grand prize at Research Expo 2017 for her work on nanoparticles that help the body’s immune system fight infections caused by Staphylococcus aureus bacteria—without the use of antibiotics. Kim received the Lee Rudee Outstanding Poster Award and a $1,000 cash prize, as well as the Katie Osterday Best Poster in mechanical engineering, which came with a $500 cash prize. Full Story
April 13, 2017
UC San Diego CHO Systems Biology Center pioneers efforts to improve cell production of high-value pharmaceuticals
Optimizing CHO (Chinese hamster ovary) cell lines to accelerate biologic drug development is a goal of the CHO Systems Biology Center at the University of California San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering. Center researchers are developing new technologies and training the next generation of cell line engineers and systems biology specialists to advance CHO cell engineering research. Full Story
April 13, 2017
Researchers develop new tools to optimize CHO cell lines for making biologic drugs
Chinese hamster ovary (CHO) cells are the workhorses behind more than half of the top-selling biologics on the market today. Humira, Avastin and Rituxan are a few. Researchers at the UC San Diego CHO Systems Biology Center are developing new tools, such as genome-scale metabolic models, to optimize CHO cell production of biologic drugs in the hope of driving down their costs. Full Story
March 28, 2017
Discovery of a new regulatory protein provides new tool for stem cell engineering
Bioengineers at the University of California San Diego have discovered a protein that regulates the switch of embryonic stem cells from the least developed “naïve” state to the more developed “primed” state. This discovery sheds light on stem cell development at a molecular level. Full Story
March 27, 2017
UC San Diego bioengineers and physicians receive $2.8 million grant from California Institute for Regenerative Medicine
Researchers led by Karen Christman, a bioengineering professor at the University of California San Diego, were awarded nearly $3.1 million by the governing Board of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine March 23. Full Story
March 23, 2017
Bioengineering Student Awarded Winston Churchill Scholarship
Fourth-year bioengineering-bioinformatics major and UC San Diego Medical Scholars Program student Angela Zou has been awarded the Winston Churchill Scholarship, one of the most prestigious awards in the world for students of science, mathematics, and engineering. Zou will receive a one-year scholarship to pursue a Master’s degree in biological sciences at Winston Churchill College at the University of Cambridge. She will also have the opportunity to work in a lab that applies computational biology approaches to studying immune responses. Zou is the third UC San Diego student to be awarded the scholarship since 1963. Full Story
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March 23, 2017
Gene Editing Technique Helps Find Cancer's Weak Spots
Genetic mutations that cause cancer also weaken cancer cells, creating an opportunity for researchers to develop drugs that will selectively kill them, while sparing normal cells. This concept is called “synthetic lethality” because the drug is only lethal to mutated (synthetic) cells. Researchers at UC San Diego School of Medicine and Jacobs School of Engineering developed a new method to search for synthetic-lethal gene combinations. The technique, published March 20 in Nature Methods, uncovered 120 new opportunities for cancer drug development. Full Story
March 23, 2017
Students Propose Solutions to Critical Health Issues at Annual Hackathon
From virtual reality to crowdsourcing ideas, participants at UC Health Hack 2017 combined creativity and problem-solving to create projects addressing critical issues in health systems and global health. The 181 participants focused on one of two tracks: health care delivery or refugee health. UC Health Hack 2017, the third annual interdisciplinary health-focused two-day hackathon at UC San Diego, was a collaboration between UC San Diego Engineering World Health, UC San Diego Health, UC Irvine Health, and Rady Children’s Hospital-San Diego. The competition featured more than 35 proposals, with support from 57 mentors and judges from interdisciplinary fields, and awarded $12,000 in prize money. Full Story
March 14, 2017
UC San Diego Spinout Genomatica is Helping Lead a Transition to More Sustainable Everyday Products
One of the chemicals that UC San Diego bioengineering spinout Genomatica is decoupling from fossil fuels, at an industrial scale, is BDO (1,4-butanediol). BDO is a widely used chemical essential in the manufacture of thousands of products from plastic packaging to coffee capsules to automotive parts. Full Story
March 13, 2017
New nano-implant could one day help restore sight
A team of engineers at the University of California San Diego and La Jolla-based startup Nanovision Biosciences Inc. have developed the nanotechnology and wireless electronics for a new type of retinal prosthesis that brings research a step closer to restoring the ability of neurons in the retina to respond to light. The researchers demonstrated this response to light in a rat retina interfacing with a prototype of the device in vitro. Full Story
March 6, 2017
New blood test could help detect and locate cancer early on
Bioengineers at the University of California San Diego have developed a new blood test that could detect cancer — and locate where in the body the tumor is growing. The study could provide a way to diagnose cancer early on without having to do invasive surgical procedures like biopsies. Full Story
February 28, 2017
Cell 'stickiness' could indicate metastatic potential
How strongly tumor cells adhere to surrounding tissue could indicate how likely cancer will spread to other parts of the body, according to a new study led by bioengineers at the University of California San Diego. Using a spinning disc device, the researchers found that tumor cells that adhere weakly are more likely to migrate and invade other tissues compared with strongly adherent cells. Full Story
February 24, 2017
Decoding the genome's cryptic language
Bioengineers at the University of California San Diego have developed a new tool to identify interactions between RNA and DNA molecules. The tool, called MARGI (Mapping RNA Genome Interactions), is the first technology that’s capable of providing a full account of all the RNA molecules that interact with a segment of DNA, as well as the locations of all these interactions — in just a single experiment. Full Story
February 16, 2017
Engineering Undergraduates Use DNA Origami to Target Cancer
A team of engineering students has a cancer-fighting idea up its sleeve—and the sleeve is nanoscale. The idea is based on a new cutting-edge research tool called DNA origami in which scientists literally fold the molecules of life into two- and three-dimensional shapes. The UC San Diego team plans to compete in Harvard's BIOMOD 2017 competition—a molecular design competition for undergraduates. Full Story