Event recording now available for panel discussion with scientists held on October 14, 2025
David A. Brenner, MD, president and CEO of Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute, welcomed members of the San Diego community to the latest event in the “A Conversation About” community engagement program on October 14, 2025.
Attendees participated in an engaging afternoon exploring the connections between aging and metabolic disorders. Brenner moderated the discussion among three featured panelists:
Debanjan Dhar, PhD, associate professor in the Cancer Genome and Epigenetics Program at Sanford Burnham Prebys
Rohit Loomba, MD, MHSc, professor of Medicine at the University of California San Diego and chief of the Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology at UC San Diego Health
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.
Watch Recording
The “A Conversation About” series brings together Sanford Burnham Prebys researchers, clinicians, and community members to explore how aging influences key health issues that affect older adults. Each session highlights current findings, innovative collaborations, and opportunities to translate scientific discoveries into improved health outcomes.
Previous events included:
A Conversation About Aging and Cancer: Examined the links between aging and cancer and featured a discussion of a current breast cancer research collaboration. Click here for the recording of the event.
In a statement published yesterday, David A. Brenner, MD, president and CEO of Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute announced his full support and backing of the Financial Accountability in Research (FAIR) proposal, under consideration by Congress.
The FAIR proposal is intended to remedy the current crisis in research funding, initiated earlier this year by the Trump administration’s announced intention to universally cap federal research funding of indirect costs (IDC) at 15 percent. IDC are the basic expenses borne by institutions to maintain operations, such as maintaining the laboratories, administering payrolls, purchasing specialized instruments, providing data cybersecurity and ensuring the safety of human participants.
The FAIR proposal is the result of months of work by a coalition of higher education and research organizations nationwide, from large research universities and academic medical centers to private foundations and non-profit research organizations like Sanford Burnham Prebys.
Kurt Marek, PhD
Chief Research Development Officer at Sanford Burnham Prebys.
“The process has been intense and galvanizing,” said Kurt Marek, PhD, chief research development officer at Sanford Burnham Prebys and one of the leaders in the FAIR effort. “More than 10,000 people have participated in national town halls and webinars. Hundreds of written comments have been submitted. Nearly 200 institutions have tested and tweaked the model.”
The result, said Brenner, is a new system for funding U.S. research, one with unprecedented emphasis on transparency, accountability and flexibility. The model is based upon three principal elements:
David A. Brenner MD
President and Chief Executive Officer, Donald Bren Chief Executive Chair
It replaces outdated and vague terms like indirect costs in favor of specific details about actual costs necessary to perform a research project. These defined costs are visible to everyone, from government officials to taxpayers. The approach promotes best practices and efficiencies, in particular aligning institutional investments with government research priorities.
It incorporates systems already effectively used in industry and private enterprise to clearly track costing categories — and make explicit how monies are spent. This ensures research performance support is tailored and tied to specific projects.
It is adaptable to institutional size and type, from large universities to smaller non-profit research institutions. It has tiers of reporting and infrastructure designed to match the resources of different institutions.
“The government has always been a key and critical supporter of American science,” said Brenner. “It is a principal reason this nation leads in terms of new cures, biomedical technologies and lives saved. The FAIR model ensures that our history of success becomes a future of achievement.”
It’s not hard to estimate life expectancy. Online calculators abound, from very simple to more complex, from the ominous (Death Clock) to the optimistic (Living to 100).
The information they require for predictions range from minimal, such as gender and age (Social Security), to fairly detailed. The Living to 100 calculator, for example, asks dozens of questions about diet, sleep habits, stress factors and incorporates data from the on-going The New England Centenarian Study at Boston University.
It’s hard to estimate life expectancy.
While these calculators are fun (barring unhappy results) and sometimes informative, they are guesstimates. However, scientists are developing tools that more precisely predict life expectancy based upon empirical indicators, such as mutation rates, blood biomarkers, telomere length and DNA methylation patterns that measure how your body is aging at a cellular level.
I am a principal investigator in the CIAO Study, an international effort to divine the longevity secrets of centenarians living in the Cilento-Salerno region of Italy. Some of the factors that help them live long and well are plainly apparent: They have active, social lives. They eat right, i.e., the Mediterranean diet. They are mentally resilient.
But these centenarians also have lower blood levels of metabolites (substances produced or used during metabolism) linked to cardiovascular disease and diabetes. They enjoy robust microcirculation of blood, comparable to persons 30 years younger, with lower levels of fasting glucose levels and LDL (bad) cholesterol.
Their telomeres are longer. Telomeres are the protective caps at the ends of chromosomes, like the plastic tips of shoelaces. Telomeres naturally shorten with age, and shorter telomeres are associated with an increased risk of cancer, heart disease and other age-related ailments. But telomere shrinkage is not fixed. It can be affected, good and bad, by lifestyle and other factors.
Our goal should be to accurately compare biological age versus chronological age. The latter can be deceiving: Some 60-year-olds are frail and have heart disease while others are pictures of health. A biological age lower than a chronological age suggests healthier aging and a longer life despite what the calendar says.
More and more, there are tests that effectively measure biological age, though none you can do online at the moment.
For example, a new blood test powered by machine learning analyzes hundreds of proteins to estimate a person’s risk of developing 18 major age-related diseases, such as heart disease, cancer, diabetes and Alzheimer’s, and of dying prematurely from any cause. Other blood-based tests estimate the biological age of individual organs, a potential predictor of future, organ-specific health problems.
Key among these organs is the brain. Imaging technologies are helping researchers measure the rate of age-related cognitive decline and risk of dementia — sometimes with a single MRI scan.
Another approach, notes Xiao Tian, who studies aging processes and mechanisms at Sanford Burnham Prebys, is the frailty index, which combines key elements of a person’s medical history, functional status (like ability to dress or prepare meals) and performance tests, such as gait speed and handgrip strength.
“A higher frailty index suggests that the biological systems in the body are under greater decline or faster aging, regardless of chronological age,” said Tian. “Frailty assessments are now being adapted to middle-aged populations to catch early signs of accelerated aging.”
The body provides plenty of peeks into its biological future, from how it modifies DNA to perform necessary functions and how each of us uniquely converts food and drink into energy to whether we can lift modest weights or walk without immediate fatigue.
This data, combined with important lifestyle factors like marital status, smoking, alcohol consumption and physical activity, can help predict life expectancy more accurately. But the value of these tests isn’t in predicting how old you might become, but rather in helping determine how many of those years are likely to be spent in good health if you do the right things.
And that, after all, is the answer we’re all really seeking.
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.
In his latest letter examining the effects and ramifications of the Trump administration’s assault on science, President and CEO David Brenner, MD, of Sanford Burnham Prebys discusses how other countries recruiting US-based scientists to work or start their careers elsewhere, with greater support and scientific freedom.
You can read Dr. Brenner’s letter here, plus earlier letters and other materials related to Research in Crisis.
Institute News
Brenner receives Director of the Year award for leading “companies in transition”
Congratulations to Sanford Burnham Prebys President and CEO David Brenner, who received last night the 2024 Director of the Year award in the category of “companies in transition” from the Corporate Directors Forum, a San Diego-based network of top executives.
The award was presented in ceremonies at the Hyatt Regency in La Jolla.
Brenner, who became president and CEO of Sanford Burnham Prebys in September 2022, was honored for his bold and dramatic vision of the institute as a 21st century leader in biomedical research.
“This award is given to directors who have contributed significantly in times of change and have brought positive and productive conclusions,” said Lori Moore, a former award recipient and Sanford Burnham Prebys trustee in her introduction at the event.
“David is both passionate and humble. He is both a physician and a scientist. Most importantly, David leads a cultural shift at Sandford Burnham Prebys with tenacity, passion, and humility! He has brought in exceptional new scientists and restructured the organization. His passion is to create a culture in our community where people synergize and find resources to work together. He indeed translates science into health.”
In just two years, Brenner has restructured the institute as home to four disease-focused centers (cancer, cardiovascular, neurologic and metabolic) and three technology-enabling centers for drug discovery, multi-omics and artificial intelligence.
With a landmark $70 million gift from philanthropist T. Denny Sanford, he has recruited a dozen new and established scientists.
“The old ways of thinking about and doing science no longer adequately address the complexities of modern science or the realities of the public health challenges we face,” said Brenner. “As scientists and physicians, we must transform how we work even as our work continues to transform itself.”
Every multicellular organism has a finite lifespan, a point in which time-related deterioration prevails over synthesis (apart from factors like disease) and death occurs. It’s the biology of senescence.
In the United States, the average life expectancy for a multicellular human being at birth is currently slightly more than 79 years – a little higher for women, a little lower for men.
Of course, some people live much longer. There are an estimated 101,000 centenarians in the U.S., people who are 100 years and older. There are approximately 722,000 centenarians in the world. These “super-aged” folks belong to a fast-growing age demographic. By 2054, the U.S. population is projected to quadruple and the global centenarian population to reach 4 million.
How and why do these people live so long? What can we learn from them? Researchers everywhere are asking these questions, including at Sanford Burnham Prebys and the San Diego Nathan Shock Center, a National Institute of Aging-supported collaboration with UC San Diego and Salk Institute.
Longevity is the particular subject of many scientific projects, including an ongoing longitudinalstudy in the Cilento region of southern Italy, which is famous for healthy aging and the Mediterranean Diet. Researchers from Sanford Burnham Prebys, the Sanford Stem Cell Institute at UC San Diego and the University of Rome La Sapienza seek to learn how their lifestyles and health behaviors, particularly their diet, may contribute to remarkably long lives with low rates of heart disease and dementia.
One of the co-principal investigators of the Cilento Initiative on Aging Outcomes (CIAO) study is David Brenner, MD, president and CEO of Sanford Burnham Prebys. Recently Brenner and colleagues visited one of the study’s participants: a 101-year-old woman named Nicolina.
This past year — my first full calendar year as president and CEO of Sanford Burnham Prebys — has been exciting and immensely rewarding. We’ve accomplished a lot and, more importantly, laid the groundwork for a wealth of future achievements.
It begins with having a plan. We are in the midst of a biomedical revolution, one in which the old ways of thinking about and doing science no longer address the complexities of modern research or the greater needs in public health.
Sanford Burnham Prebys is particularly positioned to adapt and lead in this new world by combining distinct and powerful resources with a unified mission driven by ambitious goals that emphasize disease-focused centers combined with enabling technology programs.
Of course, doing so requires a brilliant faculty, one that boasts exceptional skills and vision not just in this moment, but in the years to come. Our faculty know what to do. Our newest faculty promise to further propel and elevate. In less than a year, we have hired eight early-career scientists and physicians, an unprecedented number in such a short time.
They are among the best and brightest, coming from elite labs and institutions across the country: Shengie Feng, PhD (Howard Hughes Medical Institute and UCSF); Kelly Kersten, PhD (UCSF); Angela Liou, MD (Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia) Sanjeev Ranade, PhD (Gladstone Institutes); Sanju Sinha, PhD (National Cancer Institute); Xueqin Sherine Sun, PhD (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory); Kevin Tharp, PhD (UCSF); and Xiao Tian, PhD (Harvard Medical School).
A couple have already started their next chapters of their careers at Sanford Burnham Prebys, including already landing new grants! Others begin in January or March. Please welcome them.
These eight scientists represent the first wave. There are more to come, the benefit of Denny Sanford’s landmark gift early in 2023.
It has been a robust year in science at Sanford Burnham Prebys, too.
The Cancer Center received a merit extension from the NCI related to its support grant, a rare recognition of ongoing excellence. The Prebys Center for Chemical Genomics continues to be the go-to place for drug discovery, highlighted by a trio of recent awards totaling almost $25 million to pursue novel leads and promising therapies to treat all manners of addiction.
Sanford Burnham Prebys’ latest gala celebrated an old, dear friend, a brand-new vision and a crowd in fab form.
The event began with an evening filled with gratitude, recognition and, well, a look to the future.
On Saturday night, more than 280 friends, faculty and supporters of Sanford Burnham Prebys gathered at the Estancia La Jolla Hotel & Spa to celebrate the event’s theme: “A Future Filled with Discoveries and Cures.”
But more specifically, attendees paid homage to two men: philanthropist T. Denny Sanford, whose long and enduring support has helped shape and sustain Sanford Burnham Prebys; and David Brenner, MD, the institute’s (newish) president and CEO, who is using Sanford’s most recent gift to implement a bold, new strategic plan.
“Denny has always been a friend, guide and mentor,” said Brenner. “He has made much of what I do—what we will do together—possible.”
It was an evocative evening, with sartorially splendid guests arriving to a scene best described as a 1960s-era “lavish London lounge,” featuring vibrant colors and rich materials, roaming magicians; and a strolling trio of trumpet, trombone and tambourine players.
The festivities formally opened with welcoming remarks from Honorary Trustee Malin Burnham, who noted that “the Institute is at a dramatic time and place—with new faces, a new vision and an old friend.”
Burnham, who has served on the Board since 1982, noted that Sanford, who could not attend the event, was watching a live stream of the event from his home in South Dakota. “He can see and hear us,” Burnham said, waving.
Following dinner, Bill Gerhart, the current chair of the Sanford Burnham Prebys Board of Trustees, stepped up to acknowledge Sanford’s long history of support to the Institute and all of the donors, supporters and staff in the room who “make things happen”; and to introduce Brenner as “a guy who really can make things happen.”
Brenner, who also holds the Donald Bren Chief Executive Chair, spoke eloquently about Sanford before briefly detailing strategic plans for the Institute, one intended to put Sanford Burnham Prebys at the forefront of the current biomedical research revolution.
“Here’s my elevator speech,” Brenner said, inviting attendees to follow along by reading a program insert.
Our Mission
We translate science into health.
Biomedical research is undergoing a revolution, driven by big data, artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies.
We are uniquely positioned to lead because…
We study the toughest diseases: cancer, heart, mind and metabolic. We are forward-looking, unafraid of change or challenge. We are collaborative, flexible, multi-disciplinary and team-focused. We embrace data science. We promote entrepreneurship. We are central to a vibrant, local biomedical community.
A key part of the strategic plan, Brenner said, is embodied in the new cadre of young scientists recently recruited to Sanford Burnham Prebys from “some of the best labs at some of the best institutions in the country.”
Their recruitment (and new hires to follow) are the benefit of a $70 million gift from Sanford to create up to 20 new faculty positions in the next few years in diverse research areas including cancer, neurodegeneration and computational biology.
Four of the six new scientists were in attendance: Sanju Sinha, PhD, from the National Cancer Institute; Sanjeev Ranade, PhD, from Gladstone Institutes; Kelly Kersten, PhD, from UC San Francisco; and Xiao Tian, PhD, from Harvard Medical School.
Sinha joined the Institute in June. Kevin Tharp, PhD, from UCSF, arrives in November. The other four researchers, including Shengjie Feng, PhD, from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and UCSF, officially join Sanford Burnham Prebys in January 2024.
Brenner then introduced a special four-minute video: a visual thank-you to Sanford and a visionary peek at the Institute’s next steps and aspirations. The video ended with a standing ovation.
With the lights still dim, the entertainment portion of the evening began: a live reimagining of John Lennon’s beloved 1971 song “Imagine,” dedicated to Sanford and the new strategic plan.
“Imagine there’s no illness It’s easy if we try…”
“You may say Denny’s a dreamer But he’s not the only one. We hope someday you’ll join us And the world can be as one.”
Then it was the Beatles’ tribute band “Abbey Road Show,“ a 70-minute set of music and narration chronicling the Fab Four, followed by nightcaps, conversation and thoughts about the next day—when the future begins.
Note: For your own free, handy, wallet-sized mission card or more information about how you can support Sanford Burnham Prebys, please contact the Philanthropy team.
Sanford Burnham Prebys president and CEO David Brenner, MD, was recently in Japan for a scientific conference, but his links to the country and its scientists go back decades, beginning in the 1990s with Yoshio Yamaoka, MD, considered among the best liver surgeons in the world.
Yamaoka was also a champion of academic research in hepatology, the area of medicine that focuses on diseases of the liver. Brenner, a gastroenterologist-by-training, was also a liver disease researcher at UC San Diego.
Over the years, physicians from Kyoto University came to UC San Diego to work as fellows in Brenner’s lab for two to four years at a time. “Their scholarship and productivity have been spectacular,” said Brenner, pictured above with his wife, Tatiana Kisseleva, MD, PhD, Professor of Surgery at UC San Diego School of Medicine.
The Kyoto fellows have made their mark, Brenner notes proudly, with substantial contributions to the understanding of basic signal transduction in the liver (how cells respond to external substances through signaling molecules on their surface and inside), the cellular origin of myofibroblasts in the fibrotic liver and the role of metabolic syndrome in liver fibrosis, which is characterized by excessive scarring and found in most types of chronic liver disease.
Like Yamaoka, the fellows have risen through the ranks to become professors themselves, most notably Keiko Iwaisako, MD, PhD (Brenner’s right) and Etsuro Hatano, MD, PhD, (Brenner’s left) chair of surgery at Kyoto University. Hatano continues the tradition, sending new, bright surgeons to Brenner’s lab for scientific training.
“It was with great joy that I gave that seminar at Kyoto University,” said Brenner, recalling his recent visit. “It was my first since before the pandemic, and it was attended by all of the Kyoto alumni from our lab—and my now-retired dear friend Professor Yamaoka.”
