SoCal Minds

Two by two, surprising tales of unusual occurrences

From the Keck Graduate Institute & USC

The numbers aren't conclusive but the conventional statistic holds that the chances of a mom having twin boys run about 3 in 100. So what, then, might be the propsects that both lads go on to become medical doctors? And here are more chilling numbers: For Daniel and Babak Darvish, twin MDs who are working with the folks in Claremont (that's Daniel, right, in picture at right with Babak), there are only 500 or so people on the planet who share their affliction. They both suffer from Hereditary Inclusion Body Myopathy, a progressive muscle-wasting disorder that manifests for patients in their 20s, leading to total disability over a decade or so. The docs have co-founded a nonprofit to help support research into HIBM and Daniel has undertaken key research on the genetic and biochemical basis for the disease, efforts that got a boost from a recent Claremont workshop that has led to an FDA-approval for an 'orphan drug' designation. That will allow further investigation of Darvish's promising therapy for the rare disorder.

For twin MDs, a Claremont boost in their personal battle against rare muscle-wasting disease

To those with a black thumb and the guaranteed capacity to kill almost anything that grows with a mere glance, the Trojans provide a surprising green antidote: Lo, after many years, what are the probabilities that two undergraduate classmates would go on to become world renowned experts on those always hard to cultivate species, the orchids. The school focuses a nice tale on alum Robert Arditti, now a retired UCI biology prof who went from helping a Bel Air hobbyist grow a few blooms to a career of notable scholarship on orchids. Arditti, a big Trojan booster whose son Jonathan (they're shown in an Emily Cavalcanti photo at right) also graduated from the school, is described as one of the top five experts in his field, specializing in orchid physiology and developmental biology. Robert Dressler, a classmate in Exposition Park who went on to Harvard graduate study, is identified as another flower star, the world's leading orchid taxonomist.

For two Trojan classmates, rare flowering of orchid expertise

3 takes on how new technology could touch, alter lives

From USC & the Keck Graduate Institute

While technology doesn't always make the heart flutter or go all a Twitter, there's no denying its advances and potential.

• In Exposition Park, for example, one group of engineers envisions a day soon when flexible and transparent carbon films could be part of new kinds of solar cells, devices that would employ expanses of lab-created, graphene-polymer materials woven in ordinary-looking curtains or even T-shirts to convert sunlight into power. The new materials aren't as efficient yet as standard silicon solar cells in creating electricity. But because they're cheaper to make and so much more flexible, they could be mass-produced and worked into common products such that, experts say, those curtains could light the living room or that T-shirt might power a smart phone or MP3 player.

Could those curtains light the living room or that T-shirt power a cell phone?

• Of course, at the same time, some other Trojan experts have taken note of both the ubiquity and limits of social media and our so-called Web 2.0 lives. They've tracked for a decade the American public's burgeoning use of the internet, where more than two thirds of us have bought stuff, where most of us hook in via broadband and where most of our homes have at least two or more computers tied in. While we've become huge users and consumers of net services, however, we Americans expect lots of what occurs online to be free; while half of us said in a survey that we have tried the micro-blogging and messaging service Twitter, no respondents said they would pay for it if there were a charge. While online users may be inundated with blinking, winking and prominently placed ads, half of those responding to researchers' surveys said they never click on net ads and 70% deemed them annoying.

Will Americans pay for Twitter or click on internet ads? No way, net survey finds

• If some folks in Southern California say they're on the brink of shrinking powerful microscopes into cell-phone-sized electronic applications, why can't sprawling mechanisms that provide crucial diagnoses about the global scourge of drug-resistant tuberculosis be downsized, too? Researchers in Claremont have won a $3.6 million National Institutes of Health grant to work on key processes that could lead to a compact, hand-held device that costs less than $100 and could be used in far-flung parts of the planet where an important step in caring for impoverished sick people is determining if they suffer from strains of TB resistant to commonly used drugs. While these challenges prove huge in Africa, Haiti and other parts of the poor and developing world, concern about drug-resistant TB also grows in the industrialized world where the disease, for example, has been detected in Los Angeles and has caused scares such as a 2007 incident in which an infected individual criss-crossed continents on jet flights.

Can experts shrink, cut costs of devices to detect drug-resitant TB?

 

   

A new glimmer of help for twins with rare, fatal disease

From the Keck Graduate Institute

Addi and Cassi Hempel, chronologically speaking, may be 6 years old. But the Reno, Nev., twins (shown at right) also suffer from a rare, fatal cholesterol disease that threatens to ravage their brains and neurological systems so they decay into an Alzheimer's-like dementia most commonly seen in the aged. With the assist of a noteworthy 'rare drugs' workshop conducted annually in Claremont, however, the young girls and 500 or so others worldwide who suffer from Niemann Pick Type C disease may see the benefits of new treatment with a sugar compound called cyclodextrin. The compound, which has shown promise in pulling harmful cholersterol into its core and, thus, ridding the body of it, is used now in cholesterol-free butter and salad dressings as well as in Fabreze air freshner. But the twins' mom, Chris, after learning of its potential use in combating her daughters' progressive disease, has won permission from federal regulators for a compassionate, investigative use of cyclodextrin. And now, with the assist of the workshop, she has won approval of an 'orphan drug' designation application she filed in February, a key step for the feds eventually to bless pharmaceuticals aimed at caring for rare diseases. It's still a long road ahead, particularly in getting through clinical testing of the drug and potentially seeing it go to market. But cyclodextrin, for which there still are issues in getting the substance into more direct use in afflicted brains, has helped the twins with swallowing and stability on their feet.

Claremont workshop helps advance OK for drug to combat Niemann Pick Type C disease

Click here to learn more about Addi, Cassi and fight against rare illness

In Santa Barbara, a new center on race, ethnic studies

From UCSB & Keck Graduate Institute

Hmmmm. Color us fascinated by the UC system's decision to grant the wonderful folks up in Santa Barbara a $1.73 million grant out of the president's office to establish a systemwide center on racial studies, an effort, as described, to develop a network of scholars to advance the study, consideration and teaching of race and ethnicity as it affects the nation and especially California. The center, which will run its own web site and will be guaranteed five years of funding, will take a thematic approach, with the first topic that starts on July 1 to be 'The Nation and Its Peoples: Citizens, Denizens and Migrants.' Well, OK, while taking absolutely no shots at the superb scholarship in beautiful Santa Barbara, it's an interesting moment to put a race and ethnic studies emphasis in the pastoral, ex-urban spot even as the folks in Westwood, for example, are marking the 40th anniversary of their pioneering ethnic studies programs, which are rooted in some of the nation's, largest most diverse and influential racial and ethnic communities. Meantime, the folks in Claremont are taking their own interesting academic step, offering a one-year certificate program to assist asipiring medical students enhance their skills before applying to med school. The school says its special approach combining science and business, with a unique emphasis on drug studies, will give students a leg up in the furious competition to get into med school.

A scholarly push to network, organize thematic UC studies on race, ethnicity

Vaccines get shot of aid; a focus on 'orphan' drugs

From Pitzer & the Keck Graduate Institute

Some noteworthy developments out in Claremont on the health and medical fronts, as Pitzer scores a sizable donation to support its work on developing vaccines and KGI concludes a productive program to advance potential therapies for those suffering from rare diseases. Two docs who head up a pharmaceutical related enterprise and who have a son in school at Pitzer have ponied up a $200,000 donation to support the school's two-year-old partnership with the University of Botswana to improve health care in the developing world and provide cutting-edge bio-research, specifically, on possible vaccines against lumpy skin disease, rotavirus and other insidious ailments. Meantime, more than a dozen applications were completed and submitted to the feds as part of a rare, two-day workshop at KGI on the FDA's complex 'orphan drug' designation. That's a special status that allows researchers to 1study whether specific, promising therapies might help patients with ailments so rare they afflict fewer than 1 out of 200,000 people; 1 in 10 American suffer from one of the 7,000 identified kinds of these diseases, for which there are only 300 or so known, effective treatments. The FDA set up the special designation to encourage research on orphan drugs, which, because they benefit so few patients generate low profits and interest from pharmaceutical companies. 

Docs' gift bolsters partnership with Botswana U. for health care, research on inoculations

Unusual workshop bolsters those with drug therapies for rare afflictions

There's no whiling away this wet weekend

From Claremont McKenna College, the Keck Graduate Institute, UCLA, CSULB, CalArts, the Huntington

Yup, lots more goes on in Southern California than just the capacity to make a right turn on red (see old Woody Allen jibe).

Just a reminder of the variety of intellectual activity occurring in the area: While some scholars from across the country today and Saturday will be considering the influence of Christianity in Modern East Asia, others will be assessing what science knows about 'dark matter' in the universe and how it gets detected, while still others will be learning how to persuade the FDA they have a drug to deal with a rare disease.

And, of course, those who fancy Japanese gardens and kimono could always sneak away for a program combining the two topics or they could join in for either a Bonsai-a-thon or a recounting of a noted, century-old Japanese-inspired garden. Or maybe on a rainy weekend with the kids getting a little crazy and making their parents that way, too, it will be time to slip downtown for an international children's film festival at Redcat? Or quick, this will be the last chance to catch that play that captures the quirky life of a pioneering rocket scientist with a dark, eccentric personal life, um, maybe what could be called a Pasadena Babalon?

Bioscience: diverse, robust industry in region

From the Keck Graduate Institute

Though it doesn't hold the reputation that other regions may have for it, Southern California is the home of a robust, diverse bioscience industry, a cluster of more than 900 companies but especially 240 research-intensive companies headquartered here, as well as 29 subsidiaries of major firms, according to a new study. The work, led by an expert on biotech businesses and sponsored by Southern California Edison, found that the bioscience industry employment totals 42,756 and the combined endeavors of the various enterprises bring in billions of dollars to the Southern California economy. The study covers a broad range of companies and pursuits in bioscience, including those in pharmaceuticals, biotech, stem cells and medical and scientific diagnosis and devices. A key to the rich and flourishing industry, the study says, is the area's excellent academic and medical resources, including its outstanding universities, colleges and hospitals. It notes that six core campus complexes employ 10,000 faculty, with 400 members of National Academies and 45 Nobel Prize winners, and they attract $2 billion annually in funded research.

New research finds diverse, broad array of enterprises in bioscience in SoCal

Click here to view the report

But did he wear glasses, get beat up as a kid?

From the Keck Graduate Institute

Vacuous Southern California, land of the blond bimbos and himbos, right? Hmm. Just a little human interest feature from Claremont about one of its stand-out profs. He's a marathoner who understands six languages. He has memorized the first book of Homer's Odyssey in ancient Greek. He's pounding away at learning Rachmaninoff's second piano concerto. He was an award-winning rocket scientist at JPL and continues, as a sidelight, his investigations of black holes. But now he's doing something different. He's got a Wikipedia page devoted to some of his other work -- on how computer viruses can adapt and mutate. He's such an expert on artificial life that Michael Crichton gave him a nod in his novel, 'Prey.' What's he up to now? Besides enjoying life with his partner and two-year-old daughter? Better read more about this super smart fella's work on machine intelligence...

Photo: Prof. Chris Adami / KGI

What doesn't this prof master?

For aspiring MDs, a new way to hone credentials

From Keck Graduate Institute

Stuck in limbo, even with or on the brink of receiving an undergraduate degree? Not quite ready or maybe unable just now to get in to medical school? Want to see if, perhaps, some other part of health care might be a better career fit? The school's offering a new, novel certificate -- which also can build toward a master's degree -- and added classwork, application counseling and assistance to those who haven't gotten admitted just yet to medical school. The post-baccalaureate premedical program will launch in January and will seek to take advantage of the institute and its sister Claremont schools to get candidates enhanced academic experience to get them admitted to medical school or to learn about and get into other health care fields, via additional study that will bolster the awarded academic certificate into a master of bioscience degree.

Year-long program offers med school candidates a way to learn, bolster admission hope

LA found to lack social network to foster biotech

From Keck Graduate Institute

It takes a village -- um, to foster the thriving, prosperous and successful biotechnology industry that Los Angeles might hope for but which San Diego and San Francisco already are ahead in creating. While LA has many if not more of the intellectual attributes of other spots nationally and on the West Coast, researchers say, its biotech sector hasn't taken off, chiefly because the sprawling metropolis hasn't spawned the strong, necessary social network of scientists, universities, venture capitalists, entrepreneurs, managers and others. The metropolis' research institutions, In particular, get a needling for being slow off the mark to see the importance in supporting their own folks in licensing and bringing to market their scientific developments. UCI, UCLA and Caltech all have the elements to play a key role in pushing LA as a biotech capital, as MIT does for Boston; each has its issues, which need to be overcome. It may be that biotech takes off on its own due to developments as occurred in Orange County with its burgeoning sector of medical devices. The 18-month study of LA and biotech -- which could bring in big and badly needed capital and jobs -- was funded by the John Randolph Haynes and Dora Haynes Foundation.

 San Diego, San Francisco lead LA in seeing biotech sector grow

Click here to read Prof. Steven Casper's study