ngiusti, Author at Sanford Burnham Prebys

Author: ngiusti

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Hot and Freeze

AuthorScott LaFee
Date

April 25, 2025

The Age of Aquaticus graphic. Image credits: Jared Bartman

We’re on Radiolab! Hudson Freeze, PhD, director of the Sanford Children’s Health Research Center joins the legendary science podcast to recount a discovery that changed biology forever.

For years, scientists thought nothing could live above 73℃/163℉.At that temperature, everything boiled to death. But scientists Tom Brock and Hudson Freeze, PhD, now director of the Sanford Children’s Health Research Center and William W. Ruch Distinguished Chair at Sanford Burnham Prebys, weren’t convinced.

What began as their simple quest to trawl for life in some of the hottest natural springs on Earth would, decades later, change the trajectory of biological science forever, saving millions of lives.

Listen to Freeze recount a transformative moment in his early career on the latest Radiolab podcast.

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A Conversation About Aging and Alzheimer’s Disease at Sanford Burnham Prebys

AuthorCommunications
Date

April 23, 2025

Reena Horowitz introducing A Conversation About: Aging and Alzheimer's Disease

Event recording now available for panel discussion with scientists held on April 16, 2025

Sanford Burnham Prebys recently welcomed members of the San Diego community for an engaging afternoon focused on the intersection of aging and Alzheimer’s disease. Hosted as part of the A Conversation About series, the event featured a panel discussion with leading experts from the Center for Neurologic Diseases and Conrad Prebys Center for Chemical Genomics. The afternoon offered valuable insights into how the biology of aging contributes to neurodegenerative disease and how research at Sanford Burnham Prebys is helping to shape the future of prevention and treatment.

Panelists included Dr. Su-Chun Zhang, Dr. Timothy Huang, and Dr. Anne Bang, who discussed current findings, ongoing research collaborations, and the role of translational science in accelerating progress against Alzheimer’s. The panel also included author and caregiver advocate Muffy Walker, who introduced her new novel, Memory Weavers, which draws on her personal experience with Alzheimer’s disease.

The event was introduced by Reena Horowitz, founder of Group of 12 and Friends at Sanford Burnham Prebys, whose support has been instrumental in fostering dialogue around science and health within our community.

Panel at A Conversation About: Aging and Alzheimer's Disease

Watch Event Recording

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Science in Pictures

AuthorScott LaFee
Date

April 21, 2025

naked mole rat

In the world of animal models, naked mole rats are supermodels despite their novel appearance. They are extremely long-lived, sometimes more than 30 years. They rarely get cancer. And they can survive up to 18 minutes without oxygen.

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Sanford Burnham Prebys scientist shared research on pancreatic cancer podcast

AuthorGreg Calhoun
Date

April 18, 2025

Cosimo Commisso, PhD, headshot
Cosimo Commisso, PhD, is interim director and deputy director of the NCI-Designated Cancer Center at Sanford Burnham Prebys.

Cosimo Commisso discussed his lab’s contributions to the pancreatic cancer research community on the Project Purple Podcast

Cosimo Commisso, PhD, interim director and deputy director of the NCI-Designated Cancer Center at Sanford Burnham Prebys, was the featured guest on Episode 309 of the Project Purple Podcast.

Commisso discussed his lab’s work studying pancreatic cancer with Project Purple CEO and founder Dino Verrelli, including efforts to understand pancreatic cancer cells’ appetite for glutamine, one of the 20 amino acids used to build proteins throughout the body. The Commisso lab has shown that feeding tumors a glutamine copycat starves them of the fuel they need to survive and grow.

Commisso and Verrelli also discussed:

  • The complexity of pancreatic cancer, including changes in cellular metabolism and the microenvironment surrounding tumors. 
  • The systemic effects from factors such as diet and aging on pancreatic cancer. 
  • The importance of developing personalized diagnostics and therapies that account for individual differences. 
  • The pancreatic cancer research community’s willingness to collaborate. 
  • Opportunities to progress research more quickly to benefit patients as soon as possible. 

Project Purple is a nonprofit organization focused on pancreatic cancer research and support for patients and their families. Since 2008, Project Purple has raised more than $3.5 million to support pancreatic cancer research efforts, including improving early detection and finding new curative treatments.

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Cancer drug finds new purpose in the brain

AuthorGreg Calhoun
Date

April 14, 2025

MRIs of responding patients throughout the course of avapritinib therapy
These representative MRIs of responding patients show tumors shrinking throughout the course of avapritinib therapy.

Scientists show that an established cancer drug travels to and shrinks some brain tumors, which may lead to new therapies for a disease with few treatments

Brain tumors are the leading cause of cancer-related death in childhood. The deadliest of these tumors are known as high-grade gliomas, with the grade referring to how quickly certain tumors grow and spread throughout the central nervous system.

Treatment options for high-grade gliomas are limited. Surgical removal is typically the first option depending on the tumor size and location. Radiation often follows to kill any remaining cancer cells to prevent another tumor from forming.

“Drug options to pair with surgery and/or radiation are few and far between,” said Lukas Chavez, PhD, associate professor in the Cancer Genome and Epigenetics Program at Sanford Burnham Prebys. “A big reason for this is the blood-brain barrier being as formidable a boundary as the mythological River Styx.”

The blood-brain barrier can, at times, mean the difference between life and death. It protects the brain and spinal cord from potential toxins and pathogens circulating in the bloodstream. However, in its vigilance, it also blocks beneficial drugs from reaching the brain. This presents a major challenge, since most medications are designed to travel through the bloodstream after being ingested or injected.

Scientists from an international team including Sanford Burnham Prebys, the University of Michigan, Dana Farber Cancer Institute, the Medical University of Vienna and many other institutions published findings March 13, 2025, in Cancer Cell demonstrating that the drug avapritinib could treat certain brain tumor cells. And, like the Styx’s ferryman Charon, the medicine is one of the rare few that can cross the blood-brain barrier known to prevent the passage of more than 98% of small molecule drugs.

The researchers selected avapritinib—which is approved by the Food and Drug Administration for treating gastrointestinal and other cancers—after finding it was the strongest commercially available drug for inhibiting the gene Platelet-derived growth factor receptor alpha (PDGFRA), which is found to be mutated in 15% of high-grade gliomas.

Lukas Chavez, PhD

Lukas Chavez, PhD, is an associate professor in the Cancer Genome and Epigenetics Program at Sanford Burnham Prebys.

In addition to showing that avapritinib inhibited PDGFRA in cancer cells and mouse brain tumors, the research team tested its effects on eight human pediatric and young adult high-grade glioma patients through a compassionate-use program. The treatment was found to be safe and investigators observed that the drug caused tumors to shrink in three patients.

“More research is needed to better understand how to best repurpose this drug for high-grade gliomas,” said Chavez. “We’ll learn a lot from the ongoing Rover study, a phase 1/2 multicenter trial of avapritinib based on these findings that will include more participants.”

The authors of the new study also highlighted the need to study combining multiple targeted therapies to overcome acquired resistance to any single treatment.

Mariella G. Filbin, MD, PhD, assistant professor of Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School and research co-director of the Pediatric Neuro-Oncology Program at the Dana-Farber/Boston Children’s Cancer and Blood Disorders Center, is the lead contact on the study.

Carl Koschmann, MD, ChadTough Defeat DIPG Research Professor and associate professor of Pediatric Neuro-Oncology at the University of Michigan Medical School, and Johannes Gojo, MD, PhD, head of Pediatric Precision Oncology CNS and ITCC-Lab/Clinical Trials Unit at the Medical University of Vienna, are corresponding authors along with Filbin.

Lisa Mayr, Sina Neyazi, Kallen Schwark and Maria Trissal share first authorship of the study.

Additional authors include:

  • Owen Chapman, Sunita Sridhar, Rishaan Kenkre, Aditi Dutta, Shanqing Wang, and Jessica Wang from Sanford Burnham Prebys
  • Jenna Labelle, Sebastian K. Eder, Joana G. Marques, Carlos A.O. de Biagi-Junior, Costanza Lo Cascio, Olivia Hack, Andrezza Nascimento, Cuong M. Nguyen, Sophia Castellani, Jacob S. Rozowsky, Andrew Groves, Eshini Panditharatna, Gustavo Alencastro Veiga Cruzeiro, Rebecca D. Haase, Kuscha Tabatabai, Alicia Baumgartner, Frank Dubois, Pratiti Bandopadhayay and Keith Ligon from the Dana-Farber/Boston Children’s Cancer and Blood Disorder Center and Harvard Medical School
  • Liesa Weiler-Wichtl, Sibylle Madlener, Katharina Bruckner, Daniel Senfter, Anna Lammerer, Natalia Stepien, Daniela Lotsch-Gojo, Walter Berger, Ulrike Leiss, Verena Rosenmayr, Christian Dorfer, Karin Dieckmann, Andreas Peyrl, Amedeo A. Azizi, Leonhard Mullauer, Christine Haberler and Julia Furtner from the Medical University of Vienna
  • Jack Wadden, Tiffany Adam, Seongbae Kong, Madeline Miclea, Tirth Patel, Chandan Kumar-Sinha, Arul Chinnaiyan and Rajen Mody from the University of Michigan Medical School
  • Alexander Beck from Ludwig Maximilians University Munich
  • Jeffrey Supko and Hiroaki Wakimoto from Massachusetts General Hospital
  • Armin S. Guntner from Johannes Kepler University
  • Hana Palova, Jakub Neradil, Ondrej Slaby, Petra Pokorna and Jaroslav Sterba from Masaryk University
  • Louise M. Clark, Amy Cameron and Quang-De Nguyen from the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute
  • Noah F. Greenwald and Rameen Beroukhim from the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard
  • Christof Kramm from University Medical Center Gottingen
  • Annika Bronsema from University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf
  • Simon Bailey from Great North Children’s Hospital and Newcastle University
  • Ana Guerreiro Stucklin from University Children’s Hospital Zurich
  • Sabine Mueller from the University of California San Francisco
  • Mary Skrypek from Children’s Minnesota
  • Nina Martinez from Jefferson University
  • Daniel C. Bowers from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center
  • David T.W. Jones, Natalie Jager from Hopp Children’s Cancer Center Heidelberg
  • Chris Jones from the Institute of Cancer Research
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Science in Pictures

AuthorScott LaFee
Date

April 14, 2025

A confocal micrograph of a cochlea.

Hearing begins in the cochlea, where hair cells (red) detect and amplify sound vibrations and relay the information to the brain via auditory nerve cells (green).

Image courtesy of Sonja Pyott, University of North Carolina.

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Queer Scientists and Allies Symposium featured scientific talks, networking

AuthorGreg Calhoun
Date

April 9, 2025

Qs and As on the Mesa group photo

The event at Sanford Burnham Prebys gathered San Diego scientists to discuss their latest findings and learn about local organizations

The Queer Scientists and Allies Symposium, or Qs and As on the Mesa, was held at Sanford Burnham Prebys on Friday, April 4, 2025. The event was developed to create community connections and highlight the work of LGBTQIA+ researchers on the Torrey Pines Mesa.

The symposium began with a series of discussions and scientific talks in Building 12’s Victor E. LaFave III Memorial Auditorium. David A. Brenner, MD, president and chief executive officer of Sanford Burnham Prebys, opened the event by welcoming the meeting participants.

Jaycee Baker-Saunders, director of Research Administrative Services at Scripps Research, spoke on behalf of the Pride Alliance at Scripps Research. Baker-Saunders detailed her career path in research administration and shared how she works with the Pride Alliance at Scripps Research to have constructive conversations with executive leaders about the concerns of LGBTQIA+ staff.

Christopher Anderson, PhD, postdoctoral fellow at the University of California San Diego (UCSD), spoke on behalf of the Queer Science Society and discussed his use of multi-scale engineering approaches to help understand, diagnose and treat heart diseases.

James Walker, PhD, postdoctoral fellow at the Salk Institute, was the symposium’s final speaker. Walker presented on behalf of the Salk Pride Society and described his research on developmentally regulated DNA methylation and its relationship to gene expression in plants.

Following the formal program, attendees enjoyed networking with each other and visiting tables sponsored by local organizations that promote engagement and belonging for queer scientists and allies:

The 2025 Queer Scientists and Allies Symposium was hosted by Sanford Burnham Prebys and its Office of Workplace Engagement and Belonging, the Salk Pride Society, Queer Science Society, the Pride Alliance at Scripps Research and the La Jolla Institute for Immunology.

Speaker introductions at Qs and As on the Mesa were provided by: Emma Robinson, graduate student at Scripps Research and co-founder of the Pride Alliance at Scripps Research; Anneliese Gest, PhD, postdoctoral fellow in the department of pharmacology at UCSD; and Todd Maxwell, environmental health and safety specialist at the Salk Institute and co-chair of the Salk Pride Society.

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Science in Pictures

AuthorScott LaFee
Date

April 7, 2025

Confocal micrograph of bacterial biofilm on a human tongue cell

A confocal micrograph depicts tongue epithelial cells adjoined by several bacterial species to form a complex biofilm on the tongue’s surface. The oral cavity has the second largest and most diverse microbiota after the gut.

Image courtesy of Tagide deCarvalho, University of Maryland, Baltimore County.

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How basic science fuels economic gain

AuthorScott LaFee
Date

April 1, 2025

A recent story in The New York Times describes how new and changed federal policies pose long-term risk to science and the economic gains it creates.

Highlighted in the article is the story of Hudson Freeze, PhD, director of the Sanford Children’s Health Research Center, who as an undergraduate student at Indiana University was involved in the discovery of heat-resistant microbes.

Those microbes would prove critical to the development of polymerase chain reaction (PCR), a DNA replication tool that is now ubiquitous in genetic science and beyond. 

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Experts exchange advances in the science of healthier aging in San Diego

AuthorGreg Calhoun
Date

April 1, 2025

Tatiana Moreno presenting at the 2025 La Jolla Aging Meeting
Sanford Burnham Prebys graduate student Tatiana Moreno presented at the 2025 La Jolla Aging Meeting. She detailed her studies regarding aging and the body’s cellular recycling system, a process called autophagy.

Two scientific meetings in late March brought together researchers studying aging and its implications for disease

Scientists from San Diego and across the United States gathered March 26-27, 2025, to discuss the latest advancements in aging research. The NIH-funded San Diego Nathan Shock Center, a collaboration among the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, Sanford Burnham Prebys and the University of California San Diego, opened the two scientific meetings with its 2025 symposium on Wednesday, March 26, at the Salk Institute in the Conrad T. Prebys Auditorium in La Jolla.

The event focused on the center’s primary research area, “The Heterogeneity of Aging.” Just as people and organisms age at different rates, scientists have demonstrated that tissues also age at their own speeds – even some cells within tissues age at a unique pace. This phenomenon, known as heterogeneity of aging, is of great interest to researchers as it may hold clues for how to develop interventions that enable people to lead healthier lives as they age.  

The San Diego Nathan Shock Center Symposium convened 193 in-person attendees and another 113 virtual participants over Zoom.

Shanshan Yin, PhD, a postdoctoral associate in the lab of Peter D. Adams, PhD, director and professor in the Cancer Genome and Epigenetics Program at Sanford Burnham Prebys, presented an update on her research regarding breast cancer and aging. She discussed results from investigating changes in gene expression and immune system activity in breast cancer tumors as mice age, leading to increased cancer incidence. Yin was awarded a San Diego Nathan Shock Center pilot grant in 2023.

The 8th annual La Jolla Aging Meeting was held on Thursday, March 27, also in Salk’s Conrad T. Prebys Auditorium. The event brought together 257 in-person attendees and featured mostly short talks from San Diego-based postdoctoral fellows and students researching the biology of aging.

Kelly Yichen Li, PhD, a postdoctoral associate in the lab of Kevin Yip, PhD, interim director of the Center for Data Sciences and professor in the Cancer Genome and Epigenetics Program, delivered a talk regarding her work on zombie-like senescent cells that persist but no longer divide like most normal cells. Li discussed her work exploring cell types in samples of liver tissue. She discovered differences in cell composition and gene expression based on the age of the samples. Li and her collaborators continue to work on methods to identify senescent cells in tissue samples, which would accelerate research in the field.

Tatiana Moreno, a graduate student in the lab of Caroline Kumsta, PhD, associate dean of Student Affairs in the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences and assistant professor in the Center for Cardiovascular and Muscular Diseases, detailed her studies regarding aging and the body’s cellular recycling system, a process called autophagy. Moreno discussed her findings measuring autophagy in blood samples drawn from human volunteers of various ages, including results regarding the effects of a 12-week exercise program.

Rouven Arnold, PhD, a postdoctoral associate in the Adams lab at Sanford Burnham Prebys, presented his work seeking to better understand how aging can lead to a loss of the unique cellular identity that allows cells to carry out specialized functions in different organs. Arnold focused on the HIRA protein, one of the histone chaperones responsible for helping to build spools out of histones used to hold DNA like a thread. Following studies of HIRA’s role in the aging liver, his results suggest that HIRA plays a protective role to preserve liver cell identity and promote healthy aging in the liver.

Alessandra Sacco, PhD, professor and director of the Development, Aging and Regeneration Program in the Center for Cardiovascular and Muscular Diseases at Sanford Burnham Prebys, and dean of the institute’s Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, was a cohost for both events. Adams was a cohost for the La Jolla Aging Meeting.

About the San Diego Nathan Shock Center 
The San Diego Nathan Shock Center (SD-NSC), led by Gerald Shadel, PhD, Audrey Geisel Chair in Biomedical Science and professor in the Molecular and Cell Biology Laboratory at the Salk Institute, was established in the fall of 2020 with the overall goal of understanding the heterogeneity of aging in order to allow development of personalized interventions to increase the number of years of healthy life.

To this end, the center provides three novel scientific Research Resource Cores to develop new human cell models of aging and enable the integrated analysis of molecular, cellular and tissue heterogeneity. The SD-NSC also supports and advocates basic biology of aging research in general through the development, training and mentoring activities of a Research Development Core and robust outreach efforts. All of these activities are accomplished via a consortium of three premier research institutions on the La Jolla Research Mesa: the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, Sanford Burnham Prebys and the University of California San Diego.

Alessandra Sacco serves as director of the SD-NSC Research Development Core and Peter Adams serves as co-director of the SD-NSC Heterogeneity of Aging Core.