The two CMM Faculty members elected to the AAAS are Dr. Larry Goldstein Professor of Cellular & Molecular Medicine at the UC San Diego School of Medicine, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator and Director of the UC San Diego Stem Cell Program and Richard D. Kolodner member of the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research and Professor of Medicine and Adjunct Professor of Cellular & Molecular Medicine.

The study, conducted in the laboratory of Don Cleveland, Ph.D., UCSD Professor of Medicine, Neurosciences and Cellular and Molecular Medicine and member of the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research, will appear in the advance online publication on Nature Neuroscience's website on February 3. In what the researchers say could be promising news in the quest to find a therapy to slow the progression of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) have shown that targeting neuronal support cells called astrocytes sharply slows disease progression in mice.

Ajit Varki, M.D., Distinguished Professor of Medicine and Cellular & Molecular Medicine at UC San Diego, and Richard Schwab, M.D., Assistant Professor at the Moores UCSD Cancer Center, will head a project focusing on the early diagnosis and prognosis of lung, pancreatic and ovarian cancers. The NCI grant is part of a nation-wide initiative to develop new approaches to detecting and treating cancer through glycobiology – the study of the structure, biosynthesis and biology of complex sugar chains called glycans, found on the surfaces of all cells and many proteins in nature.

The Human Stem Cell Core Facility, directed by Karl Willert, Ph.D., Assistant Adjunct Professor, Cellular & Molecular Medicine, is integral to UC San Diego’s broad-based efforts in stem cell research. The core will receive a $2.8 million Shared Research Laboratory Grant from the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM).