Sometimes, the rarest diseases provide the most critical insights. Pediatrician David Rowitch, MD, PhD, is leading a stem cell trial designed to treat children with connatal Pelizaeus-Merzbacher disease (PMD), an uncommon but fatal brain disorder. It is UCSF’s first stem cell clinical trial in humans, and Rowitch has high hopes that his work will not […]

The heart cannot adequately regenerate damaged tissue after a heart attack. But could stem cells help it along that path? Doctors and researchers at UCSF with a wide range of expertise are exploring this possibility together, working to see whether stem cell therapies might pump some regenerative power into the heart. Working within a so-called […]

The simple worm piqued the budding young scientist’s interest in developmental biology. “I loved it,” he says. Robert Blelloch, MD, PhD, followed that passion through fellowships and into work with blood stem cells. “It was so exciting to see how many different ways blood stem cells were being used to treat patients,” he says.

Researchers at the Eli and Edythe Broad Center of Regeneration Medicine and Stem Cell Research at UCSF are tackling monumental problems – cures for diseases as pernicious as Parkinson’s disease and brain tumors. Yet a vexing barrier to those would-be cures doesn’t get as much limelight: how to put the cells into people as efficiently […]

Stem cells have an innate attraction to tumor cells. If genetically engineered to produce proteins with anti-tumor activity, they could serve as tumor-killing assassins. At UCSF, a team of scientists led by Mitchel S. Berger, MD, chair of the Department of Neurological Surgery, is exploring this strategy in the fight against glioblastoma – the most […]

In searching for a cure for diabetes, researchers from UCSF and their partners at ViaCyte, a San Diego biotechnology company, have already cleared some large hurdles. ViaCyte has developed a line of human stem cells that have been specially cultured in the laboratory. When transplanted into rodents, these stem cells turn into insulin-producing beta cells, […]

Some signals in the brain inhibit action, and some spark or excite it. A balance of those two impulses is critical to healthy brain function – and an imbalance lies beneath many of the most common brain problems such as epilepsy, Parkinson’s disease and traumatic injuries. Researchers Arturo Alvarez-Buylla, PhD, and John Rubenstein, MD, PhD, […]

In an age of tremendous biological discoveries, where stem cells may ultimately prove useful as therapies for many diseases, a quiet mathematician and physicist is emerging as a key player. Jun Song, PhD, has found himself in demand among the biologists in the Eli and Edythe Broad Center of Regeneration Medicine and Stem Cell Research […]

When UCSF researcher Charles Chiu, MD, PhD, recently renewed his center’s partnership with Abbott Diagnostics, it marked a milestone in the University’s efforts to keep its industry partnerships alive and well. Abbott’s renewed funding for the Viral Diagnostics and Discovery Center (VDDC),  which Chiu directs at China Basin near UCSF’s Mission Bay campus, underscores a common goal of […]

When he was in kindergarten, Jason Pomerantz, MD, drew a self-portrait depicting a surgeon at work in an operating room. He told his mother, “I want to make people not get old.” Now 38 and a craniofacial plastic surgeon at UCSF, he knows all too well that immortality is the stuff of science fiction. Yet […]