The honorees are neurologist Timothy Cloughesy, infectious disease specialist Judith Currier, primary care physician Carol Mangione and cardiologist Kalyanam Shivkumar.
VAntage Point
Research Week honors pioneering work for Veterans
Special online events third week in May
When the Global War on Terror started, VA knew the possibility of unique injuries. Now, a decade later, Traumatic Brain Injury or TBI is one of those signature issues facing nearly 104,000 Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans who receive VA health care.
Learning more about TBI and developing new treatments is the work of researchers like Dr. David Cifu at the Richmond VA Medical Center in Virginia.
Cifu, a top expert on TBI, is one of eight researchers being recognized this year during National VA Research Week, May 17–21. The theme of this year’s event is “One Team, One Mission.”
FINDINGS
A new study by researchers at the UCLA Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center has identified a novel combination therapy to potentially help overcome resistance to immunotherapy in people diagnosed with advanced lung cancer. The combination approach uses immune checkpoint inhibitors with ATRA, a safe medication that is widely used to treat leukemia. The team found the combination therapy led to eradication of over 70% of tumors when tested in mice with LKB1-deficient lung cancer. It also generated durable tumor-specific immunity.
BACKGROUND
Immune checkpoint inhibitors have substantially improved the outcomes for people with lung cancer. The five-year survival rate for patients with advanced disease on this therapy is more than 13% compared to 5% in patients with conventional chemotherapy. Although immunotherapy has been successful for many patients, a majority of patients still do not respond to the therapy.
UCLA
March 4, 2021
Seventeen researchers at UCLA have been named recipients of awards from the 2020 UCLA Innovation Fund Biomedical Competition.
These awards, up to $200,000 per project, support early stage research that lead to commercialization activities, which usually aren’t supported by basic research grants. As a result, researchers can develop their technologies to a point where the chances of success are greatly increased. Importantly, all awarded projects receive consultations from an outside industry and investor adviser panel, which provides technical and commercial feedback that is key to technology development.
The UCLA Innovation Fund was established by the UCLA Technology Development Group, in conjunction with the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, UCLA College’s divisions of physical sciences and life sciences, the UCLA Samueli School of Engineering, the School of Dentistry and UCLA Health.