News

NIDDK Mission Statement

The program will provide supplementary funds to support advanced research opportunities for exceptional emerging physician-scientists (hereafter, "candidates") holding an MD or equivalent or MD/PhD degrees, and who are early in their research careers. The supplement is intended to allow candidates to expand their research experience to help them transition beyond their clinical training to the next stage of their research careers as physician-scientists.

ABSTRACT

Adaptations to infectious and dietary pressures shape mammalian physiology and disease risk. How such adaptations affect sex-biased diseases remains understudied. Here, we show that sex-dependent hepatic gene programs confer a robust (~300%) survival advantage for male mice during lethal bacterial infection. The transcription factor BCL6, which masculinizes hepatic gene expression at puberty, is essential for this advantage. However, protection by BCL6 comes at a cost during conditions of dietary excess, resulting in overt fatty liver and glucose intolerance in males. Deleting hepatic BCL6 reverses these phenotypes but markedly lowers male survival during infection, thus establishing a sex-dependent tradeoff between host defense and metabolic systems. Our findings offer strong evidence that some current sex-biased diseases are rooted in ancient evolutionary trade-offs between immunity and metabolism.

Accepted 8/29/22 Science

The Edwin B. Astwood Award for Outstanding Research in Basic Science, Endocrine Society (2023)

In recognition of the Society’s commitment to scientific excellence, the Endocrine Society is pleased to announce that it has restored the Edwin B. Astwood Award to the Laureate Awards to be presented at ENDO2023. Originally awarded from 1967 and renamed to honor the scientific contributions of the late Dr. Edwin B. Astwood, this laureate award recognizes individuals who have made significant contributions to the field of endocrinology via their outstanding basic science research.

The latest group effort between the Julius/Ingraham/Bayrer/Brierley Labs highlights the importance of EC cells in gut visceral pain and anxiety. Link to Paper and Figures 

I will be exploring sex differences in host immunity for the next few years! Thanks to everyone who helped me on the pathway to independence.

@hollyingrahamSF

@DrEmilyGoldberg

@SuneilKoliwad

 and Jackie Maher.

Follow me on twitter: https://twitter.com/joni_nikkanen

Drs. Lin Yuan (Julius Lab) and Muriel Babey (Ingraham Lab) were awarded a Weill Award for Junior Investigators in the Neurosciences Impacted by COVID-19 Setbacks in the amount of $50,000. 

Combining their basic and clinical expertise, this team of junior scientists will begin probing a new model to better understand diabetic neuropathy.

Project Title: Mechanisms of sensory nerve damage in type 2 diabetes – a role for insulin dysregulation?

Independent Postdoctoral Fellow Research Award

$15,000 one-year fellowship for meetings, courses, or research expenses

These fellowships are designed to encourage creative and independent research driven by postdoctoral scholars. The fellowships support UCSF postdocs who wish to explore biomedical research directions that are not directly linked to the research interests of their postdoctoral mentor and require the engagement of an additional collaborator or co-mentor. The Call for Proposals for the Independent Postdoctoral Fellow Research Award is announced once a year. Joni has been looking at evolutionary tradeoffs as a way to explain our current sex-biased diseases, specifically at the interface between host defense responses and metabolism in the liver. 

Archana receives new funding to pursue the role of estrogen signaling in the gut and its effect on the microbiome from the Benioff Center for Microbiome Medicine - See All of the 2021 Awardees. Their Mission: The microbiome research community at UCSF is focused on some of the biggest chronic disease issues of our time with an emphasis on translating discovery into innovative treatment solutions. The human body is home to a thriving community of diverse microbes whose activities and products shape our health. Our mission is to accelerate our understanding of how microbes promote health and prevent disease and to leverage this information to develop novel, effective treatment paradigms bringing them to patients in the shortest possible time.

Ms. Padilla, a Neuroscience Graduate Student, receives a newly announced "fast grant" to study the role of drugs in motivating activity in a mouse model. Reasoning that exercise is recognized as one deterrent of dementia and cognitive failure during aging, Adriana wishes to know if triggering a neurocircuit for promoting spontaneous activity, describes in Krause et al., 2021 reverses aging in mice. This new grant mechanism provides funding for scientists to start working on what they consider the most important problems in aging biology, without delay. For more information on this unique funding mechanism, please go to this link to learn more.

Congrats to Bill and the rest of the team.

Their work was recently covered by Gretchen Reynolds in the NYT Science Times on 10/26/21.