Tuesday, February 24, 1998
Community Briefs
BRIEFS:
Diversity awards come to UC San Francisco
Four people at UC San Francisco recently were awarded the Martin
Luther King, Jr. Award for promoting diversity and ideals inspired
by the civil rights leader.
Dr. Daniel Lowenstein, one of the recipients, served as co-chair
of the Chancellor¹s Steering Committee on Diversity
1995-1997.
In that position, Lowenstein helped develop programs addressing
campus diversity and affirmative action. He also obtained funding
for committee activities.
Stella Hsu, who served with Lowenstein on the steering
committee, played a role in establishing programs that promote
mutual respect, understanding and appreciation for cultural
diversity at the campus.
Kyra Bobinet and Jennifer Danek, fourth-year medical students,
received the award for the program they devised to help at-risk
youth at a San Francisco youth guidance center.
UCLA researchers win grant money
UCLA researchers will test a dormant part of the human body to
see if they can regenerate an immune system in patients with
AIDS.
Jerome Zack, associate director of the UCLA AIDS Institute, and
Beth Jamieson will work with a $75,000 grant which Zack won from
the American Foundation for AIDS Research. They will investigate if
the thymus, which grows dormant after the age of 18, can reproduce
T-lymphocyte cells, immune cells that combat viruses.
The researchers will transplant adult human thymus tissue into
mice without immune systems and test whether the thymus becomes
active again, producing T-lymphocyte cells. If this stage is
successful, Zack and Jamieson will investigate whether the thymus
can continue to function in the presence of HIV.
Last fall, these researchers made a similar discovery using
fetal immune stem cells in animals to find that an HIV-infected
immune system can regenerate itself with antiviral drug
therapy.
³Our early research gave us hope that HIV directly affects
the T-cells themselves, not the fetal thymus or the rest of the
immune environment. Now we must determine if the adult thymus has
similar potential to regenerate a new immune system,² Zack
said.
Four researchers at UCLA¹s Jonsson Cancer Center won
$350,000 awards to further their research of treatments of prostate
cancer.
The Association for the Cure of Cancer of the Prostate (CaP
CURE) chose Charles Sawyers, Rob Reiter, Sam Gambhir and Ayyappan
Rajasekaran among the 85 winners from a field of 571 prostate
cancer experts.
Sawyers, Reiter and Rajasekaran will work on treatment plans for
those with cancer, while Gambhir will work on a decision-support
system to help patients weigh their options when deciding on
treatment.
Hollywood mogul donates $10 million
Universal Studios Chairman Emeritus Lew Wasserman and his wife,
Edie, have donated $10 million to Campaign UCLA, the campuswide
fund-raising effort established in May 1997.
The announcement was made Monday evening at UCLA¹s annual
College of Letters and Science Awards dinner. Nearly 400 people
attended the black-tie gala at The Regent Beverly Wilshire
Hotel.
Most of the gift, $8.75 million, will go to the Edith and Lew
Wasserman Fund for Undergraduate Support at UCLA, to provide
scholarships for promising undergraduate education, according to
UCLA Chancellor Albert Carnesale.
An endowment of $250,000 will be used as a maintenance fund for
the new UCLA Palm Springs Center.
Compiled from Daily Bruin staff reports.