Two UC San Diego researchers elected to Institute of medicine

 

Newswise - University of California, San Diego medical school researcher the researchers Joseph G. Gleeson, MD, Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Professor of neuroscience and Pediatrics and Richard D. Kolodner, PhD, Professor of medicine and Ludwig Cancer Research scientist, have been appointed new members of the Institute of Medicine (IOM), considered among the highest honors in the fields of health and medicine.

Gleeson and Kolodner were among 70 new members and 10 foreign partners announced today the IOM annual meeting, bringing the total membership of the IOM to 1966 worldwide. Forty-six members of the Faculty of UC San Diego, current and Emeritus, are members of the IOM.

Joseph Gleeson

Gleeson is the principal investigator at the Center for the development of the brain, a laboratory that seeks to understand the genetic basis of diseases of the brain such as mental retardation, epilepsy and autism using genetic tools. He is also director of the UC San Diego neuroscience Core, Co-Director of the master of Biomedical Sciences and a member of the Institute of genomic medicine at UC San Diego.

He is also a member of the Child Neurology society, the society for Neuroscience and the American Society of human genetics and has served on the editorial boards of the Journal of Child Neurology, Journal of Pediatric Neurology and human Molecular Genetics.

Gleeson got his Bachelor's degree in chemistry from UC San Diego and his title of doctor at the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine. He came to UC San Diego in 1999. His awards and recognition include award Klingenstein Fellowship in neuroscience, a Searle Scholar Award and the Burroughs Wellcome Fund Clinical Scientist Award in translational research.

Richard Kolodner

Kolodner, Professor in cellular and molecular medicine of the Faculty of medicine at UC San Diego and UC San Diego Moores Cancer Center, has made seminal contributions to understanding the connection between cancer and the repair of the DNA mismatch - the ability of cells to correct the genetic DNA.

It is member of the National Academy of Sciences (2000), the Academy American of Arts & Sciences (2008), the American Society of Microbiology, the Genetics Society of America and American Association for Cancer Research. He has served on numerous boards advice and review, including the Board of scientific advisors of the national cancer Institute and Howard Hughes Medical Institute criticizes Scientific Council.

Among his awards are the research award of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute Morse, the Prix Charles S. Mott of the General Motors Cancer Research Foundation and the Landon-AACR Prize for basic cancer research.

Kolodner received his titles of Bachelor's degree and doctorate in biological sciences from UC Irvine and he worked at the medical school of Harvard to the UC San Diego in 1997.

About the Institute of medicine
Founded in 1970 by the National Academy of Sciences, the IOM serves as an independent, science-based, authoritative advisory group to the federal Government of the United States on various topics ranging from the effects on the health of the intake of salt, cancer care and abuse of minors in the armed forces mental illness and gun violence.

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Recently published research by the founder of ClinMet and UC San Diego team demonstrates value of metabolomics based on urine to translational medicine

 

SAN DIEGO, Oct.11, 2013 - ClinMet announced today that researchers of the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine have published new research of metabolomics that uncovers a novel, feature and very consistent biochemical signature in urine associated with diabetic kidney disease. The results, which form a basis of the proprietary clinical metabolomics of ClinMet platform, have implications for the identification of biomarkers clinically useful for kidney function and to sharpen the development of drugs and clinical trials related to chronic kidney disease, as well as diabetes, obesity and cardiovascular disease.

The new research, authored by U.C. San Diego Professor and founder scientific ClinMet, Kumar Sharma, M.D., F.A.H.A (Director of the Center for translational medicine Renal Division of Nefrologia-hipertension and the Institute of Medicine of the metabolomics) and his colleagues, appears online in the journal of the American Society of Nephrology. ClinMet has an exclusive license to use this set of metabolites in the development of drugs and other applications, based on patents requested by UC San Diego.

The researchers quantified 94 metabolites in the urine in patients with diabetes (type 1 or type 2) and chronic kidney disease (CKD), subjects with diabetes but no kidney disease and healthy controls. They found that 13 of the metabolites were significantly different in people with disease compared with healthy controls (p-values between 10-3 to 10-18), and 12 of 13 was still highly significant in comparison with patients with type 1 or type 2 and not CKD. In addition, 12 of the 13 metabolites were linked to Mitochondrial Metabolism and suggested global suppression of mitochondrial activity in subjects with chronic kidney diseases in relation to healthy individuals. This conclusion is in sharp contrast to prevailing beliefs about excess activity mitochondrial having a causal relationship with diabetic complications. The conclusions based on urine metabolomics studies were independently validated based on protein and DNA analysis, indicating reduced mitochondrial contents in the kidneys of patients with diabetic nephropathy.

"It is evident from this study that urine and plasma-based metabolomics can be a rich source of biomarkers to understand and treat kidney disease diabetes and possibly related to cardiovascular complications," said Dr. Sharma. "This approach also offers direct insights into the biochemical pathways associated with kidney dysfunction".

Power of clinical metabolomics

"Genomics can help to predict the overall risk of disease or potential response of a patient to a drug, but you can not capture the effects that changes in diet, environmental factors or other diseases in the progression of the disease or improvement," said Yesh Subramanian, President, CEO and co-founder of ClinMet. "Clinical metabolomics, by contrast, allows us to quickly see biochemically what happens in the specific pathways of the disease over time and in the context of other factors that affect the health of the patient, including drug therapy. This makes clinical metabolomics a highly useful platform for research and translational drug development".

"We see clinical metabolomics allowing pharmaceutical and biotech clients to effectively apply the medicine precision today", said Mr. Subramanian. "The ability to predict which patients are likely to respond better to specific treatments holds immense promise for sharpening of phase 2 and 3 clinical trials now and improve the clinical medicine in the future".

About ClinMet (clinical metabolomics Inc.)

ClinMet, founded in 2011, is a privately held company headquartered in San Diego, CA that provides pharmaceutical companies with clinically relevant insights and useful data on the effectiveness of the medication, safety and mechanism of action using its proprietary platform urine biomarker metabolomics for diabetes, kidney disease, obesity, and cardiovascular disease. ClinMet applies its unique combination of clinical expertise, in-depth proprietary metabolomics experience and computer skills to improve the rate of speed and the success of drug development. The company helps drug developers efficiently transform compounds promising safe and effective medicines and to effectively develop and implement its strategy of companion Diagnostics.

ClinMet technology and clinical experience is based on the legacy of research of William Nyhan, M.D., Ph.d., founder of head of the biochemical genetics and laboratory of metabolomics and founding Chair of the Department of Pediatrics at UC San Diego. Dr. Nyhan, one of the founders of the field of metabolic diseases human and his team have developed many methods of diagnosis standard of gold of the mass spectrometry and analysis metabolomic which are used by the centres of excellence in human genetics and metabolism around the world. On the other hand, cientifico-fundador ClinMet, Kumar Sharma, is an expert recognized worldwide in diabetic nephropathy and translational research. He has conducted several studies milestone in diabetic nephropathy in a level of translational research and has dedicated his career to develop new therapies for patients with chronic kidney disease.