Archive for category: News

Photo by: Laurel Hungerford

Cardiovascular disease continues to be the leading cause of mortality in the world responsible for up to one-third of all deaths globally in recent years. What is even more concerning is the steady rise in the prevalence of heart and vascular disorders, such that the impact on the public health system and the associated cost burden is becoming harder to sustain as the population ages. However, with the need to find new cost-effective treatments at an all-time high, access to and maintenance of a high-quality infrastructure dedicated to cardiovascular research is difficult to come by for university investigators. Likewise, the lead time to specialized testing and advanced disease models for medical device manufacturers is equally challenging.  Often, this delays the time to market and increases research and development expenditures for new device products and solutions in the interventional vascular space.

To solve this barrier for both university investigators studying heart disease and the life science engineers looking to translate benchtop research to the patient bedside, Dr. David Chalyan, director of clinical development at Philips Image-Guided Therapy Devices in San Diego, and Dr. Thomas Milner, director of UCI Beckman Laser Institute & Medical Clinic, envision a state-of-the art interventional facility.  This facility provides robust access to university and industry scientists who are developing new cures for cardiovascular disease. To create the appropriate regulatory framework for this Public Private Partnership (PPP), Milner and Chalyan collaborated with another Southern California native, David Gibbons, director of industry sponsored research at UCI Beall Applied Innovation, for his guidance on the government and private sector agreement.

Remarkable progress has followed, resulting in the acquisition of a significant grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the successful execution of advanced medical laser and Intravascular Imaging (IVI) studies. These studies offer novel diagnostic and therapeutic strategies for vascular disease patients. As co-investigators on this research, Chalyan and Milner kicked off a translational research seminar bringing world-renowned cardiologists, radiologists, and vascular surgeons to UCI Beckman Laser Institute & Medical Clinic for lectures and hands-on medical training sessions.

“Within the first month of the study, the laboratory has already met its annual goals, thanks to Joel Haaf and Brandon Scanlon from the Philips Heart Rhythm Management division,” said Chalyan. “We have also received cross-industry and cross-department interest from Dr. Naomi Chesler, the director at Edwards Lifesciences Center for Advanced Cardiovascular Technology, and Dr. Mahmood Razavi, the director of Clinical Trials and Research Centers at St. Joseph Vascular Institute.”

With strong support from UCI and Philips leadership, Chalyan, Milner and Gibbons are actively working on the next phase of the long-term partnership.

“The upcoming benchmark includes bringing the latest Philips fully-integrated Azurion bi-plane with IntraSight7 interventional platform and GLP-compliant operation to further expand on the capabilities and throughput of vascular studies at the Institute,” said Dr. Milner. “We remain committed to the overarching goal of improving medical device safety and accelerating innovation for cardiovascular disease patients in Orange County, California.”

Advanced instrumentation and new dedicated space to train the next generation of scientists and engineers

Dr. Bernard Choi, Associate Director of UCI Beckman Laser Institute, received a 2022 Department of Defense (DoD) Research and Education Program for Historically Black Colleges and Universities and Minority-Serving Institutions (HBCU/MI) award.  The award supports the establishment of the UCI Core Optical Laboratory Resource (COLR), which will feature a dedicated space and advanced instrumentation, enhancing the Institute’s capabilities to attract and train the next generation of scientists and engineers. Through UCI COLR, students will expand their skills by developing basic and applied optical systems and observing, measuring and interpreting fundamental optical phenomena.

Optical technologies enable minimally- and non-invasive functional imaging, multiscale diagnostics, image-guided therapy and laser surgery. Since its founding in 1986, UCI Beckman Laser Institute and Medical Clinic has served as a premier interdisciplinary research institute for optics and photonics in biology and medicine. Research teams at the Institute develop and apply new optical technologies and methodologies to address biological and biomedical problems.

“Hands-on training in optics and photonics is a significant bottleneck in the education of students and researchers, stated Choi. “The UCI COLR will enable us to provide a robust and broad education in fundamental optical principles.”

New instrumentation in UCI COLR will augment Institute capabilities, as researchers pioneer advanced optical technologies for trauma and critical care.  New lab-based coursework in multiple departments will provide trainees with opportunities to develop optical system design and data acquisition skills. In addition, general optics and photonics courses and specialty courses in imaging approaches will rely heavily on UCI COLR technologies and equipment. Topics of interest include laser fundamentals, imaging system design and understanding health disparities associated with optical measurements.

Institute teams will develop formal and informal summer workshops and boot camps.  UCI COLR will impact approximately 30 students annually through the Institute’s Access to Careers in Engineering and Sciences (ACES) program and other UCI multi-year partnerships with HBCU and local minority service community college programs.  During these visits, UCI COLR will strengthen the hands-on training and engagement of the summer students in optics and photonics.

“I look forward to working with the 15 outstanding UCI faculty who comprise the COLR management team, to enhance the training of our undergraduate and graduate students,” stated Choi.  “The experiential learning opportunities that will result from the UCI COLR will give our trainees a stronger foundation in optics and photonics, and we believe that these experiences will increase the enthusiasm of our students and stimulate their interest in pursuing careers in biophotonics and STEM [science, technology, engineering and math] in general.”

By Rachel Karas, UCI Samueli School of Engineering

UCI’s Merage School of Business Beall Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship hosted its “Shark Tank”-style grand finale of the Stella Zhang New Venture Competition on June 3. A total of $100,000 was distributed to winning teams across five different categories; engineering students were members of five different winning teams. The panel of four esteemed Orange County investors and entrepreneur ecosystem influencers contributed insights and thoughtful questions to the teams.

Here are the winning teams that included Anteater Engineers among their members:

Noveil earned the grand prize of $20,000, along with first place in the Consumer Services category. Noveil is the first dating platform for Gen Z college students with no profiles and no swipes, and it increases the number of matches and in-person dates a user receives.

forMED Technologies took home first place ($10,000) in the Life Sciences category. forMED offers patients and doctors an at-home, noncontact intraocular pressure monitoring system that measures eye pressure daily to ensure medication effectiveness and prevent blindness.

Sayenza Biosciences won second place in the Life Sciences category ($5,000). Sayenza Biosciences is a medical device company developing the industry’s first fully automated platform for processing liposuction fat, the largest source of adult stem cells in the body, for point-of-care aesthetic and regenerative medicine applications.

GaleGauge was awarded second place in the Consumer Products category ($5,000). GaleGauge is a golf training tool that uses live wind, temperature and distance data to calculate how players need to adjust their swings to the elements for sinking the perfect shot.

SnapHealth placed second in the Consumer Services category ($5,000). SnapHealth’s mission is to improve the healthcare experience for patients by empowering them to take control over their health record data with a simple mobile application.

The Stella Zhang New Venture Competition is open to all UCI students, staff members and researchers as well as community members interested in the opportunity to form a team, launch a startup and potentially fund a business idea.

Click here to read the full article on the UCI Samueli School of Engineering website.

UCI Health dermatologist Anand Ganesan created new compounds that slow skin cancer growth

By Matt Coker

Dr. Anand Ganesan probably won’t be hanging from a ceiling `a la Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible, but the UCI Health dermatologist and School of Medicine professor of dermatology and biological sciences does compare part of what he does to a plot device in the 1996 action thriller.

“You know where the guy opens the switch box, there are all these wires coming down, and he’s trying to figure out which wire to cut to stop something bad from happening? That’s kind of what we’re trying to do: Cut the right wire to short- circuit cancer,” says the co-director of the Biotechnology, Imaging & Drug Discovery program at the Chao Family Comprehensive Cancer Center.

Ganesan says being a cancer researcher pays dividends when it comes to his own practice as a dermatologist. Unlike other health systems in Orange County, UCI Health has a roster of physicians who double as world-class researchers in their specialties.

“Most doctors don’t know how a drug is developed and what goes into the thought process of doing that,” Ganesan says. “Knowing that really helps guide my practice a lot more.”

Not to mix Tom Cruise movies, but the researcher/dermatologist is a top gun when it comes to embodying the CFCCC mission to facilitate and promote interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary cancer research across UCI; disseminate state-of-the-art cancer knowledge to caregivers, patients and families, and the public; train the next diverse generation of cancer researchers and care providers; and deliver the highest quality multidisciplinary clinical care to cancer patients.

This would not be possible, Ganesan says, without grants from the National Institutes for Health and UCI’s Anti-Cancer Challenge that have helped pave the way for his decade-plus research into identifying genes that are activated in cancer and developing ways to prevent them from sending the signals that spur the disease.

The Anti-Cancer Challenge, a ride-run-walk event that raises awareness and funds for pilot studies and clinical trials that support research at the CFCCC, provided Ganesan’s team with about $40,000 in seed money. That led to the development of a new drug to treat melanoma ­– which may have broad applications for other tumor types – that received substantially more funding from the NIH.

A $10 million, five-year National Cancer Institute grant recognizes the university’s deep expertise in biology, mathematics, chemistry and other research areas and led to the creation of the UCI Center for Cancer Systems Biology. The university is among just 13 research institutions nationwide that are part of the NCI’s Cancer Systems Biology Consortium.

“Our mission is to translate the findings of our research into treatments that can benefit patients, driven by a strong commitment to scientific discovery and clinical innovation,” Dr. Richard A. Van Etten, the CFCCC’s director, has said. “Institutions lacking their own research base can follow and adopt advances developed at NCI centers like ours, but they cannot lead in the same way as comprehensive cancer centers that integrate research with clinical care.”

For an idea of how this has played out for Ganesan and his team, their latest paper in Cell Reports, “New molecule holds promise of therapies for cancer and rare diseases,” builds on their 2017 Cell Reports paper, “Key mutation in melanoma suppresses the immune system,” which builds on their 2012 Cancer Research paper, “Researchers find cause of chemotherapy resistance in melanoma.”

Melanoma gets top billing because it is what Ganesan and his fellow dermatologists in sunny Southern California deal with most frequently.

“Fortunately, 90 percent of melanoma is curable by surgery,” he says. “Almost two-thirds of the other 10 percent we see is what we call Stage III disease, which means the tumor has moved to the lymph node but hasn’t moved to the rest of the body. The remainder of it is where the tumor has moved to the rest of the body.”

Ganesan and his fellow researchers are trying to develop new therapies for most patients with Stage III tumors. “The strategy scientists have taken initially was to say, ‘OK, these tumors have the same mutations as the metastatic tumors, so the immune system is potentially activated in the same way,’ ” he explains. “But mutation-directed therapies and immunotherapies for patients with metastatic tumors have side effects. Can we think of a way that we can target these tumors in a more direct fashion, targeting their ability to move, that’s more selective than for those that are starting to metastasize?”

Step one was establishing a genetic strategy, which was the point of the 2012 paper that identified a class of genes called CDC42 that are important in chemotherapy resistance and the function of some genes in tumor progression.

“These genes are like switches,” says Ganesan, returning to the Mission Impossible scenario. “We use the genetic approach to find out which wire is important or which signaling pathway is important. The next logical question is how do we cut it? How do we target the right switch? Switches go on and off, on and off, on and off, all the time. But they only do something that induces cancer when they’re on. So, how can we develop a drug to target these switches when they are on?”

It was a question perplexing Ganesan when he happened to be in Italy and met Marco De Vivo, group leader of the Molecular Modeling & Drug Discovery Lab at the Italian Institute of Technology (IIT) in Genoa.

“I told him about what I was working on,” Ganesan recalls, “and I said, ‘The switch is important, but how do I target it? How do I make a cancer drug out of it?’ And he said, ‘Oh, I think I could do that.’ I said, ‘Oh, let’s work together.’ So, then we started working together.”

They eventually identified the lead molecule to target the switch, based on computational models, and developed a drug that could bind to it to prevent it from sending a cancer signal. According to Ganesan, the research by the IIT and his own Ganesan Lab offers hope to Stage III patients who would have previously “fallen through the cracks.”

“We’ve made a new chemical that’s never been made before,” he says. “We show how the drug works. And we show that the drug slows cancer growth. But there’s still a journey from having a drug that does that in the models we have and having a drug that we give to people. That’s the journey we’re on right now.”

To take the leap from academic research to clinical therapy, Ganesan, De Vivo and two other partners started Alyra Therapeutics to develop the medication further. The startup is currently in fundraising mode.

To further explain how Ganesan’s research helps him as a practitioner, we shift from the movie theater to the pool hall.

“Great pool players line up three shots ahead of the shot they are playing,” he says. “Like the ball is here and they want to stop it in the right place so they can play the next ball and stop that shot so they can play the next one. That’s the way I think about drugs for patients. You are trying to figure out what will the patient respond to best – that’s your first shot – and when that person responds or does not respond, what do you do next? That’s your next shot, and you have all your shots lined up before you take the first one.”

As a drug developer, he goes through the same process.

“You hit the ball into the first one, and it bounces off where you want to line up the second shot,” he explains. “How are you going to get there? That’s kind of the way I think about things. It’s not just for melanoma or diagnostics of patients but also for other diseases that I treat. Conducting research has really changed the way that I think and care for patients.”

Coming up with therapies to make melanoma and the other diseases he treats less prevalent “is kind of the idea” of his research and practice, he notes. Because patients treated for melanoma often see it return at some point, the direction he is now taking is finding ways to keep it from developing in the first place. One way his team is doing that is by refining theranostics, in which imaging guides diagnostics.

“We are trying to apply theranostics to melanoma,” says Ganesan. “Immunotherapy is the gold standard of treatment. What that does is make the immune system fight the tumor and the tumor goes away. And when it does, it’s amazing because it could be a lifelong cure.”