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Source: UCLA Newsroom: Health Sciences
Procedure: Transplants
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Total 15 results found since Jan 2013.
UCLA awarded $11.5 million to improve organ, hand and face transplantation
The Dumont –UCLA Transplant Center has received two grants totaling $11.5 million from the federal government for research aimed at making donated organs last longer and helping transplant recipients live longer, healthier lives.The grant projects — one funded by the National Institutes of Health and the other by the Department of Defense — focus specifically on improving outcomes in liver transplantation and in hand and face transplantation.Both initiatives are led by Dr. Jerzy Kupiec-Weglinski, UCLA ’s Paul I. Terasaki Professor of Surgery and vice chair of basic research in the surgery department at theDavid Gef...
Source: UCLA Newsroom: Health Sciences - July 29, 2022 Category: Universities & Medical Training Source Type: news
Gene therapy offers potential cure to children born without an immune system
An experimental form of gene therapy developed by a team of researchers from UCLA and Great Ormond Street Hospital in London has successfully treated 48 of 50 children born with a rare and deadly inherited disorder that leaves them without an immune system.Severe combined immunodeficiency due to adenosine deaminase deficiency, or ADA-SCID, is caused by mutations in theADA gene that creates the enzyme adenosine deaminase, which is essential to a functioning immune system.For children with the condition, even day-to-day activities like going to school or playing with friends can lead to dangerous, life-threatening infections...
Source: UCLA Newsroom: Health Sciences - May 11, 2021 Category: Universities & Medical Training Source Type: news
In lab study, nanoparticle shows promising results for treating severe allergies
For about 1 in 13 children in the U.S., usually harmless foodstuffs such as milk, eggs and peanuts can send the body ’s natural defenses into overdrive.Symptoms of food allergies can vary widely, but at worst, a systemwide allergic response can lead to anaphylaxis, a life-threatening condition characterized by a sudden drop in blood pressure and difficulty breathing.Although there are now some preventive measures for food-induced anaphylaxis, there are not yet any long-lasting solutions — treatments capable of locking the immune system into a state of tolerance, so that it doesn’t respond to allergens.Now, a UCLA res...
Source: UCLA Newsroom: Health Sciences - January 14, 2021 Category: Universities & Medical Training Source Type: news
Six patients with rare blood disease are doing well after gene therapy clinical trial
UCLA researchers are part of an international team that reported the use of a stem cell gene therapy to treat nine people with the rare, inherited blood disease known as X-linked chronic granulomatous disease, or X-CGD. Six of those patients are now in remission and have stopped other treatments. Before now, people with X-CGD – which causes recurrent infections, prolonged hospitalizations for treatment, and a shortened lifespan – had to rely on bone marrow donations for a chance at remission.“With this gene therapy, you can use a patient’s own stem cells instead of donor cells for a transplant,” said Dr. Donald K...
Source: UCLA Newsroom: Health Sciences - January 28, 2020 Category: Universities & Medical Training Source Type: news
Drug accelerates blood system ’s recovery after chemotherapy, radiation
A drug developed by UCLA physician-scientists and chemists speeds up the regeneration of mouse and human blood stem cells after exposure to radiation. If the results can be replicated in humans, the compound could help people recover quicker from chemotherapy, radiation and bone marrow transplants.The study, published in Nature Communications,also sheds light on the basic biology behind blood stem cell regeneration and the role of a specific molecular process that is blocked by the new drug. Blood stem cells reside in the bone marrow and produce all of the body ’s blood and immune cells.“We’re very excited about the ...
Source: UCLA Newsroom: Health Sciences - August 14, 2019 Category: Universities & Medical Training Source Type: news
Decades later, man meets the UCLA doctor who saved his life
It ’s 1970 and 10-month-old Maurice Elias lay in a hospital bed in the pediatric intensive care unit dangerously malnourished, at just 14 pounds, and with a severe infection in his mouth. The antibiotics that doctors at UCLA had been using to treat Maurice, who had been born without a functional immu ne system, were no longer working.The only way Maurice was going to survive was a bone marrow transplant.“If we couldn't find a way to give Maurice a working immune system, he was going to die. And the only way to do so was with a risky transplant that could be fatal, too,” said Dr. Richard Stiehm, the UCLA doctor who tr...
Source: UCLA Newsroom: Health Sciences - September 19, 2018 Category: Universities & Medical Training Source Type: news
UCLA scientists receive $7.7 million grant to study HIV recurrence
The virus that causes AIDS is known to hide in certain rare cells. When people with HIV stop taking their medications, the virus can re-emerge and multiply, or “rebound,” from those hiding places. To better combat HIV, scientists have been working to understand how and why the virus re-emerges.“It’s the resurrection of virus that you couldn’t see in the body before,” said Jerome Zack, professor of medicine and chair of the UCLA department of microbiology, immunology and molecular genetics at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. Zack, who is director of the UCLA Center for AIDS Research, and colleague...
Source: UCLA Newsroom: Health Sciences - February 16, 2018 Category: Universities & Medical Training Source Type: news
Gene therapy using CAR T cells could provide long-term protection against HIV
FINDINGSA UCLA-led research team has created blood-forming stem cells that can carry a gene that allows the body to produce cells that can detect and destroy HIV-infected cells. The blood-forming cells, called hematopoietic stem and progenitor cells, or HSPCs, have been engineered to carry chimeric antigen receptor, or CAR, genes that allows the production of immune cells that target cells infected with HIV.After being transplanted into the body, the engineered cells formed immune cells that not only destroyed the infected cells, but also lived for more than two years. This suggests that they have the potential to give peo...
Source: UCLA Newsroom: Health Sciences - January 25, 2018 Category: Universities & Medical Training Source Type: news
Researchers create molecule that could ‘kick and kill’ HIV
Current anti-AIDS drugs are highly effective at making HIV undetectable and allowing people with the virus to live longer, healthier lives. The treatments, a class of medications called antiretroviral therapy, also greatly reduce the chance of transmission from person to person.But the medications do not actually rid the body of the virus, which has the ability to elude medications by lying dormant in cells called CD4+ T cells, which signal another type of T cell, the CD8, to destroy HIV-infected cells. When a person with HIV stops treatment, the virus emerges and replicates in the body, weakening the immune system and rai...
Source: UCLA Newsroom: Health Sciences - October 5, 2017 Category: Universities & Medical Training Source Type: news
Team led by UCLA, UCSF receives $8 million to study virus that often strikes after kidney transplants
UCLA, UC San Francisco and City of Hope have received a five-year, $8 million grant from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases to study how a common virus called cytomegalovirus may provoke the immune system to reject transplanted kidneys.The 14-member interdisciplinary team is co-led by Elaine Reed, who holds the Daljit S. and Elaine Sarkaria Endowed Chair in Diagnostic Medicine at UCLA and is director of the UCLA Immunogenetics Center. “Nearly 70 percent of people around the world carry antibodies to the cytomegalovirus infection, yet healthy people rarely display symptoms,” said Reed, who also ...
Source: UCLA Newsroom: Health Sciences - August 24, 2017 Category: Universities & Medical Training Source Type: news
UCLA scientists show how to amplify or stifle signals for immune responses
T cells, the managers of our immune systems, spend their days shaking hands with another type of cell that presents small pieces of protein from pathogens or cancerous cells to the T cell. But each T cell is programmed to recognize just a few protein pieces, known as antigens, meaning years can go by without the T cell, or its descendants, recognizing an antigen.When the T cell does recognize an antigen, it gives the cell presenting the antigen a “hug,” so to speak, instead of a handshake. This initial interaction causes the T cell to search nearby to find other cells that are presenting the same antigen to give them ...
Source: UCLA Newsroom: Health Sciences - March 7, 2017 Category: Universities & Medical Training Source Type: news
Genetic factors control regenerative properties of blood-forming stem cells, UCLA studies show
FINDINGSResearchers from the UCLA Department of Medicine, Division of Hematology Oncology and the Eli and Edythe Broad Center of Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cell Research at UCLA have published two studies that define how key genetic factors affect blood-forming stem cells by either accelerating or hindering the cells ’ regenerative properties. The findings could one day lead to improved treatments for people undergoing common therapies for cancer such as chemotherapy and radiation. BACKGROUNDBlood-forming stem cells, or hematopoietic stem cells, are found in the bone marrow. These cells have two unique properties:...
Source: UCLA Newsroom: Health Sciences - December 5, 2016 Category: Universities & Medical Training Source Type: news
Stem cell gene therapy developed at UCLA holds promise for eliminating HIV infection
Scientists at the UCLA Eli and Edythe Broad Center of Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cell Research are one step closer to engineering a tool that could one day arm the body’s immune system to fight HIV — and win. The new technique harnesses the regenerative capacity of stem cells to generate an immune response to the virus.
The findings were published today in the journal Molecular Therapy.
“We hope this approach could one day allow HIV-positive individuals to reduce or even stop their current HIV drug regimen and clear the virus from the body altogether,” said Scott Kitchen, the study’s lead author and a member...
Source: UCLA Newsroom: Health Sciences - June 30, 2015 Category: Universities & Medical Training Source Type: news
UCLA researchers unlock protein key to harnessing regenerative power of blood stem cells
In this study, the authors showed that a cell surface protein called protein tyrosine phosphatase-sigma (PTP-sigma) regulates the critical process called engraftment, which is how HSCs start to grow and make healthy blood cells after transplantation.
Mamle Quarmyne, a graduate student Chute’s lab and first author of the study, demonstrated that PTP-sigma is produced (expressed) on a high percentage of mouse and human HSCs. She showed further that genetic deletion of PTP-sigma in mice markedly increased the ability of HSCs to engraft in transplanted mice.
In a complementary study, Quarmyne demonstrated that selection o...
Source: UCLA Newsroom: Health Sciences - December 8, 2014 Category: Universities & Medical Training Source Type: news
UCLA researcher pioneers gene therapy cure for ‘Bubble Baby’ disease
UCLA stem cell researchers have pioneered a stem cell gene therapy cure for children born with a life-threatening condition called adenosine deaminase–deficient severe combined immunodeficiency, or ADA-deficient SCID. Often called Bubble Baby disease, the condition can be fatal within the first year of life if left untreated.
The groundbreaking treatment was developed by Dr. Donald Kohn, a renowned stem cell researcher and member of the UCLA Eli and Edythe Broad Center of Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cell Research .
Kohn’s breakthrough was developed over three decades of research aimed at creating a gene therapy that...
Source: UCLA Newsroom: Health Sciences - November 20, 2014 Category: Universities & Medical Training Source Type: news
