A fluorescent micrograph of a section of small intestine of a mouse. The finger-like projections are villi, which line the intestinal tract and increase surface area for absorption.
Image courtesy of Amy Engevik, Medical University of South Carolina.
An optical projection tomograph depicts the lung of a 16 ½ day old embryonic mouse, with airways highlighted in pink and epithelial progenitors in green.
Image courtesy of Kamryn Gerner-Mauro and Jichao Chen at University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center.
A trichinella cyst is depicted in pork muscle. Trichinella is a parasitic worm known to cause trichinosis, an intestinal infection that, untreated, can progress to serious inflammation of the heart and lungs.
Image courtesy of Nathan P. Myhrvold, Modernist Cuisine.
In every body and in everybody, there is an enormous, diverse and changing array of medical and health information, from longitudinal data like our weight and blood pressure over the years to the biological samples, such as blood and tissues, that your doctor or a medical professional may ask you to provide.
There is also the non-medical social and demographic information that we share, from lifestyle choices like smoking, drinking and how much we exercise to socioeconomic status and how often we actually seek or need health care.
To some degree, we provide this information to our doctors during visits to clinics and hospitals. It’s part of how they work to keep each of us as healthy as possible.
But for everyone else, not so much, which is a shame.
The amount of health information collected by physicians is vast, unprecedented and exponentially growing, fueled by now-standard electronic health records (EHR) that make it easier, simpler and faster to collect and share patient information.
That last word “share” is critical. While having a digital record of your health is useful and convenient for individual doctors and patients, it is the untapped power and potential of new insights and discoveries lying within our combined health data that promises improved biomedical research and better answers to our relentless need for new drugs, treatments and therapies.
The term “translational medicine,” whose intent is to specifically apply basic scientific discoveries to human health, was introduced in the 1990s and gained widespread use through the emergence of popular terms like “bench-to-bedside” and “precision medicine” in the early 2000s.
But there is a massive gap between the generation of clinical data with its hidden treasures and the reality of companies and institutions leveraging those insights into new drugs and treatments that actually help people.
I know because I stand in that gap, a member of the scientific infrastructure necessary to translate research into health. I’m not alone, but it can sometimes feel like a lonely crusade.
Thanks to the biomedical revolution fueled by new technologies, we now have much deeper, empirically based understanding of how life works, from molecules and cells to networks of tissues and organs. Correspondingly, we better understand the pathology of disease, albeit not perfectly. There is still much to learn.
Where we always struggle is translating basic knowledge into action, into healthier and saved lives.
Humans are 99.9% identical in their genetic makeup. It is the remaining 0.1% that makes each of us unique. These genomic differences include “variances of uncertain significance.” or VUS. They are slight differences in DNA. Unlike gene variations specifically associated with disease, such as cystic fibrosis and sickle cell anemia, it is not clear whether variances of uncertain significances are actually connected to a specific health condition.
They are riddles wrapped in a mystery inside a cell membrane. We don’t know what variances of uncertain significances do, if they do anything, but within them perhaps lie many of the answers and remedies for what ails us.
Everyday clinics and hospitals collect human cells and tissue samples for examination. If a sample reveals a known, recognizable condition or disease, it can inform the physician about next treatment steps. If it does not, it is likely stored and ignored.
Doctors lack the expertise and capacity to study variances of uncertain significances in detail. Current and future biotechnology companies might have the expertise and ability to test and market new remedies, but they need someone to first to figure out how biology translates to medicine.
Some places, like where I work, already do this. It’s part of our vision and mission. The translational journey requires taking real steps. Systematically tapping the troves of clinical samples for new knowledge is one of them.
Another approach is to introduce the variances of uncertain significance into a preclinical model of a disease and see whether it makes the phenotype (the disease characteristics) worse. If the disease gets worse in the model system, the variances of uncertain significance is probably a disease causing mutation, if the disease is unchanged, the variances of uncertain significance is probably a harmless genetic variant.
Biomedical repositories and basic researchers can be doing more, collaborating more. The benefits are both certain and significant.
A micrograph using confocal, fluorescence and image stacking technologies depicts the optic nerve head of a rodent. Astrocytes in yellow, contractile proteins in red and vasculature in green.
Image courtesy of Hassanin Qambari and Jayden Dickson, Lions Eye Institute, Australia.
A darkfield image of a mammal heart.
Image courtesy of Hillary Guzik, Rochester Institute of Technology.
The Institute’s Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences held its second Commencement ceremony to celebrate four recent graduates
Family, friends and colleagues gathered at the end of May 2025 to applaud the four newest alumni of the Sanford Burnham Prebys Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences. These early-career scientists are the latest graduates to leave their mark on the institute and carry forth the graduate program’s motto, “Knowledge is the power to heal.”
On Friday, May 30, 2025, the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences held its graduation ceremony at the institute’s La Jolla campus in the Victor E. LaFave III Memorial Auditorium.
“Each of you has made significant contributions to your field of science, created new knowledge and demonstrated the ability to perform independent research,” said Alessandra Sacco, PhD, dean of the institute’s graduate school and professor and director of the Development, Aging and Regeneration Program in the Center for Cardiovascular and Muscular Diseases.
“Today, we celebrate not only your academic journey, but also your years of dedication to get to this point, and the perseverance and intellectual curiosity that enabled you to reach this milestone.”
Following her remarks, Sacco introduced Ryan Loughran, PhD ’24, to speak on behalf of his fellow graduates.
“Graduate school is an experience unlike any other,” said Loughran. “You’re constantly drinking from a fire hose, learning new techniques, running experiments, coding data pipelines, writing and reviewing papers, preparing posters and giving talks.
‘I came to realize that it’s overwhelming by design. Somewhere in that chaos, something incredible happens. You’re forged by the fire. You begin to absorb information with an insatiable hunger. You think more critically and more creatively when confronting problems, and that is the true gift of the PhD experience.”
Loughran turned the podium over to Guy Salvesen, PhD, the inaugural dean of the graduate school, who provided the Commencement address.
“The graduates in front of you display the success of the program,” he said. “More importantly and more fundamentally, though, they have reached this milestone based on the merits of the hard-won accomplishments that they share with their mentors.”
Diane Klotz, PhD, chief learning officer at Sanford Burnham Prebys, then discussed the meaning of the hoods and symbols that are used in Commencement ceremonies. She invited the graduates forward and instructed faculty members to adorn them with the doctoral academic hoods signifying completion of a PhD program.
This year, the following graduates were recognized:
Andrei Osterman, PhD, the graduate school’s vice dean and associate dean of curriculum and a professor in the Center for Metabolic and Liver Diseases, provided the ceremony’s closing remarks.
“While today is primarily a celebration of individual intellectual achievements, it also recognizes your meaningful contributions to and interactions with the scientific community,” he said. “You have grown through peer review and collaborating with others, and these experiences will benefit you wherever your career takes you.”
More on this year’s graduates
Zong Ming Chua, PhD ’24, was born in Singapore. He developed a deep and early interest in biology after reading Darwin’s seminal work “On the Origin of Species” and various books by Richard Dawkins.
At Sanford Burnham Prebys, Zong Ming investigated the mechanisms that link cellular senescence and epigenetics. He discovered a new role of the histone variant H2A.Z R80C. He found that the histone variant influenced the transcriptomic profile of senescent cells.
Zong Ming moved to the Bay Area after graduating and is currently a computational biologist at GigaGen.
Jordan Friedlein, PhD ’24, was born and raised in Minnesota. From an early age, he expressed a desire to understand how the world worked. In high school, biology and physiology were his favorite classes.
Jordan joined the Bagchi Lab in 2019 and worked on investigating the role of circular RNA derived proteins in Myc-driven cancers. During his five years, Jordan enjoyed contributing to cutting-edge research and building lasting relationships with other grad students and institute members.
Ryan Loughran, PhD ’24, was born and raised in Greensburg, Penn. Growing up in a family with four generations of pharmacists, Ryan always imagined following in their footsteps and taking over the family-owned Loughran’s Pharmacy.
However, his path took a different turn during his undergraduate studies when he had the opportunity to spend a summer in New York City as an intern in the Emerling lab at Weill Cornell Medicine. He later moved with Emerling to help establish her new lab at Sanford Burnham Prebys as her lab manager. He later joined the Emerling lab as a graduate student.
Ryan plans to undertake a short postdoctoral position before transitioning into the pharmaceutical industry, where he aims to apply his knowledge and experience in cancer research to real-world applications.
Zhouting Zhu, PhD ’24, grew up in Changzhou city in the Jiangsu province of China. After completing a Master of Science in Surgery degree from Nanjing University in 2018, Zhouting joined the graduate program at Sanford Burnham Prebys.
She conducted her doctoral research in the lab of Tariq Rana, PhD, an educational affiliate professor in the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences. Zhouting focused on RNA biology and cancer immunotherapy. Her work explored immune cell dynamics in tumors and spleens under various treatment conditions in mouse cancer models.
Zhouting is currently working toward MD-equivalency certification, with the long-term goal of becoming a board-certified physician-scientist.
Purkinje neurons are located in the cerebellar cortex of the brain. With their flask-shaped cell bodies, many branching dendrites and a single long axon, these cells are essential for controlling motor activity.
Image courtesy of Thomas Deerinck, NCMIR, UC San Diego.
Evan Snyder, MD, PhD, professor in the Center for Neurologic Diseases, has been named a Fellow of the Child Neurology Society, honoring a distinguished career and significant contributions in the field of child neurology.
Snyder, who is also a member of the Cancer Genome and Epigenetics Program at Sanford Burnham Prebys, is a longtime leader in pediatric neuroscience and stem cell research. He joined Sanford Burnham Prebys in 2003, and was founding director of its original Stem Cell Research Center.
The Child Neurology Society is a professional organization whose mission is to promote the optimal care of children with neurological and developmental disorders by providing education, advocacy and support for clinicians and researchers in the field.
Snyder was cited for his clinical expertise, research contributions and ongoing commitment to the mission of the Society. He is featured in the second edition of Child Neurology: Its Origins, Founders, Growth and Evolution, a collection of biographies detailing the lives of innovators in child neurology throughout history.
Sanford Burnham Prebys scientists bring dramatic stories of scientific achievement to life
In March 2025, Sanford Burnham Prebys scientists Ani Deshpande, PhD, and Pamela Itkin-Ansari, PhD, launched a new podcast exploring groundbreaking discoveries in science and medicine. The initial episodes have garnered rave reviews, including being hailed as “masterpieces” by upcoming podcast guest Adam Heller, PhD, the scientist and inventor who revolutionized blood sugar testing and laid the groundwork for modern continuous glucose monitoring systems.
On the first episode of The Discovery Dialogues Podcast, the hosts examined early descriptions of diabetes across ancient civilizations. Deshpande and Itkin-Ansari traced the research that led to the discovery of insulin and to life-saving treatment for diabetes.
Following its discovery as a treatment for diabetes, insulin had to be purified from millions of animal carcasses. In the follow-up episode, the podcasters discussed the race to make human insulin using genetic engineering, including interviews with Keiichi Itakura, PhD, a key member of the historic team that created the first synthetic gene to make human insulin, and Herb Boyer, PhD, the scientist who founded the first biotech company called Genentech and brought insulin to millions of patients.
Ani Deshpande, PhD, is an associate professor in the Cancer Genome and Epigenetics Program at Sanford Burnham Prebys.
Pamela Itkin-Ansari, PhD, is an adjunct professor in the Center for Cardiovascular and Muscular Diseases at Sanford Burnham Prebys.
Last week, Deshpande and Itkin-Ansari released their third episode detailing animals that use insulin as venom and highlighting an animal that can sense low blood sugar faster than a machine.
We recently sat down with them to learn more about their motivations and creative process.
What is your origin story as scientists turned podcasters?
DESHPANDE: I have been very interested in communicating science for quite some time. And I think it is important for more scientists to speak in a way that all people can understand, and to embrace new ways of communicating.
I got especially excited to talk about the incredible potential of GLP-1 drugs such as Ozempic and Wegovy, but I don’t think you can properly understand them without a grasp of diabetes. I decided to tackle diabetes as the podcast’s first topic, and I reached out to Pam as a partner with complementary expertise.
ITKIN-ANSARI: I have done a lot of scientific outreach in the past as a diabetes scientist, including with the La Jolla Playhouse and Fleet Science Center, so I jumped at the opportunity. As it turns out, Ani and I are kindred spirits in terms of our desire to help people understand how biomedical research has changed the world.
What is your process for developing each episode?
DESHPANDE: We have a very elaborate process for deciding on each episode’s topic. outlining the chapters or segments and then passing drafts back and forth until we’ve refined them into a version that is both accurate and entertaining.
ITKIN-ANSARI: Getting that balance right is so important. I’m a Radiolab junkie. I have to hear every episode. The reason I keep coming back is because I get to learn something new and have a ton of fun along the way.
DESHPANDE: It is important to us that we’re not just telling stories people already know, so we take our time to find fascinating stories about the science and the personalities behind the discoveries.
How much research goes into making the podcast?
DESHPANDE: We just read and read and read and read. Then, we bounce ideas off each other to see what makes it into an episode.
ITKIN-ANSARI: The other thing is fact-checking. We feel it our job as card-carrying scientists to be as thorough as we can be to get the facts right.
While writing for the first three episodes, what information or stories surprised you?
ITKIN-ANSARI: For me, I was amazed by the venoms of the cone snail that have already led to an FDA-approved drug for severe pain and may also revolutionize diabetes treatment.
DESHPANDE: I think it’s surprising that diabetes had been described in detail more than three millennia ago. Many of our audience members told us they were surprised by that fact as well.
What teasers can you share about future episodes?
ITKIN-ANSARI: For an upcoming episode, a legendary scientist who changed diabetes care forever after surviving the Holocaust and making his way to the U.S.
DESHPANDE: One of the most fascinating things we will cover in our future episodes and that will surprise most people is that many of the most influential drugs in the history of medicine have come from plant poisons and animal venoms. It blows my mind, and I hope our listeners will also find it to be amazing.
Listeners can find The Discovery Dialogues Podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and Amazon Music. The YouTube version includes on-camera interviews and additional illustrations.