Scintillon News
The Scintillon Institute is Awarded CIRM Grant to Assess Engineered Hematopoietic Stem Cells as a Viable HIV Treatment Option
November 29, 2022 11:47 AM
Associate Professor Brian Lawson, Ph.D. Antiretroviral therapy currently on the market is highly effective in the treatment of HIV, lowering viral loads and inhibiting disease progression; the problem is that these drugs do not affect dormant HIV hidden in host immune cells and, over time, are associated with significant toxicity. Therefore, how do we completely eliminate HIV, active and latent, from an infected person? One exciting approach to achieve that goal is the use of chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cell immunotherapy, which gained broad recognition as a new treatment modality for certain blood cancers.
SURE Program 2022
September 19, 2022 10:22 AM
"It's a wrap!" - Scintillon's summer high school student research program excites young minds and comes to an end for 2022. Every year, Scintillon’s research faculty perform exciting biomedical research pushing for a cure of many major disease conditions, including neuroscience, immunology, virology, and aging-associated diseases. Towards these ends, the faculty has to secure new grants and new philanthropy to resource these efforts. In addition to these difficult challenges, every summer the faculty also joins together and donates a significant amount of their time and effort to teach and host a growing number of very highly motivated local San Diego high school students in Scintillon’s research laboratories for an intensive 4-week training program.
This protein can help us think, or it can shred our cells
February 07, 2022 8:10 AM
San Diego – A new study reveals that a protein long known to play a role in communication between cells in the brain is also capable of obliterating cells if left unchecked because of its penchant for twisting and puncturing the cell membranes. The protein — known as complexin — if left alone is so toxic it can shred cells. Yet, in the brain, a suite of controls makes sure the protein plays nice and helps neurons communicate by aiding in the release of neurotransmitters. The findings are published Feb. 7 in Nature Structural and Molecular Biology.
International Conference on Three-dimensional Cryo-EM Image Analysis
January 19, 2022 7:26 AM
The 4th International Conference on Three-dimensional Cryo-EM Image Analysis will be held March 9-12, 2022, at Granlibakken Conference Center, Lake Tahoe, California. The 2022 conference builds on our successful previous events on the same theme in 2014, 2016 and 2018. This year the conference is organized by Scintillon Professors Dorit Hanein and Niels Volkmann. The goal of this series of meetings is for technical discussions of state-of-the-art image analysis approaches and algorithm developments to tackle challenging biological problems and to identify current limitations in the field.
Recent advances in structural biology research by Scintillon researchers
January 19, 2022 7:26 AM
Rapid tool for cell nanoarchitecture integrity assessment Detailed three-dimensional contextual information of molecular processes is often necessary to understand these processes well enough to develop efficient drug-targeting and disease intervention strategies in all medical fields. We developed a tool that significantly accelerates studies providing such information (Gaietta et al., 2021 Journal of Structural Biology). Structural basis of aE-catenin–F-actin catch bond behavior A better understanding of how cell-cell contacts are maintained or broken is essential for unraveling the detailed mechanism of cancer progression.