UC Science Today

This is Science Today. Every year, about 250 thousand women in America are diagnosed with breast cancer, making it one of the leading types of cancers nationwide. And now a University of California, San Francisco study reveals a major risk factor of the disease. Study leader Karla Kerlikowske says it’s breast structure, or as researchers says, breast density.

“Breast density is a radiologic term. On a mammogram, you look at how much in quotes “dense” tissue someone has vs how much fat."

Kerlikowske’s team evaluated over 200,000 women and discovered that breast density by far exceeds other risk factors.

“People commonly think if you have a family history of breast cancer that contributes mostly to women developing breast cancer, but we found breast density was 4 times more likely to account for the development of breast cancer than having a first degree relative who had breast cancer."

Kerlikowske says women in this risk group should pay extra attention to screening tests.

Precision medicine should change the way researchers conduct experimental studies. That’s according to pediatric surgeon Hanmin Lee of the University of California, San Francisco.

“All the studies that are currently done right now and all the data that is collected is generally on one subset of patients which is generally older white men. But for let’s say young under-represented female minority patients, the implication of this manifestation, this disease, might be far different.“

So, Lee says scientists should make studies more inclusive.

“And we can only get to that if we look at large data sets as opposed to what we’ve done historically in the past, which is looking at a 100 or 200 patients in a trial.”

Lee hopes the era of electronic medical records will give researchers and doctors access to a large volume of reliable data, which will help make studies and medicine more precise.

There was a lot of exciting University of California research news this past week. First the Food and Drug Administration approved a new drug that could halt Multiple Sclerosis. We had previously spoken to neurologist Bruce Cree of the University of California, San Francisco about his work testing the new drug, called ocrelizumab. At the time, Cree explained that it actually targets B-cells in the human body, blocking the inflammation that drives the disease. He explained that most MS therapies in the past targeted T-cells, which often had serious side effects.

"You can have profound immunological effects and clinical benefits by just targeting B-cells alone. And I think this is actually an important advance for multiple sclerosis because when you just target B-cells without affecting T-cells, you have less of a potential for adverse events due to broad spectrum immune suppression."

Really, such great news considering this devastating disease affects hundreds of thousands of Americans and more than 2.3 million people worldwide. While at UCSF we visited neurologist Lauren Weiss, who has discovered a new way to study brain disorders. Basically, they are growing brain cells out of simple skin biopsies taken from patients with autism and other developmental problems.

"We can grow those cells in a lab and then turn them into stem cells and ultimately in the cells of the brain. That’s a pretty amazing advance when you think about how challenging it is to study the human brain. Nobody wants to give you too much access to that!"

Hear these and other stories about the latest research at the University of California. Subscribe to Science Today on iTunes or follow us on Soundcloud and Stitcher. Until next time, I’m Larissa Branin.

The Food and Drug Administration has approved a new drug that could halt multiple sclerosis, a devastating disease that affects hundreds of thousands of Americans. Neurologist Bruce Cree of the University of California, San Francisco, was part of the team testing ocrelizumab, which goes by the brand name Ocrevus. Cree explains that it targets B cells in the human body and blocks the inflammation that drives the disease. Most MS therapies in the past targeted T cells, which often had serious side effects.

"You can have profound immunological effects and clinical benefits by just targeting B cells alone. And I think this is actually an important advance for multiple sclerosis because when you just target these cells without affecting T cells, you have less of a potential for adverse events due to broad spectrum immune suppression."

Researchers have found a new way to study brain disorders. Neurologist Lauren Weiss of the University of California, San Francisco is growing brain cells out of simple skin biopsies taken from patients with autism and other developmental problems.

“We can grow those cells in a lab and then turn them into stem cells, and ultimately into the cells of the brain. That’s a pretty amazing advance when you think about how challenging it is to study the human brain. Nobody wants to give you too much access to that.”

Obtaining living neurons is complicated and may raise ethical concerns. So this new method solves these problems by effectively growing brain cells in petri dishes.

“The technology has evolved very quickly. We are increasing the number of different types of neurons we can pretty consistently make in the lab."

And that gives scientists more opportunities to study brain abnormalities. For Science Today, I’m Larissa Branin.

A new technique called exome sequencing is a revolutionary way to look at our DNA. This, according to psychiatrist Stephen Sanders of the University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine. Basically, it allows researchers to determine the structure of all expressed genes in a genome and recently, it helped UCSF scientists find mutations in a gene that triggers autism.

“And that was a gene called SCN2A, which stands for Voltage Gated Sodium Channel 2 Alpha. When we saw that result, we were very excited, because we could show that this gene was associated with autism. It was playing an important role in what autism is on a neurological level.”

Sanders and his colleagues found that people with autism have more S-C-N-2-A mutations, than those without this disease.

“And before this technology it would have been impossible to have found enough mutations to work this out."

Sanders says the next step will be to identify the specific type of the gene mutation and predict the severity of autism.

One way to improve the nation’s healthcare quality is to start effectively analyzing medical data using modern technology in clinics and hospitals. This is something that the industry hasn’t done just yet, according to pediatric surgeon Hanmin Lee of the University of California, San Francisco.

“We don’t have one unified electronic medical record system. So it is hard to aggregate big data, but I believe we are on the cusp of that. ”

Lee says diagnostic methods should be improved too.

“For instance, the data that the nurses collect to determine whether a patient is in a good or bad nutritional status is they record how much food is left on a patient’s tray when it gets taken away by the support staff. So that’s the best metric to ascertain whether or not patients are at high or low risk of decubitus ulcers. To currently use this, it borders on the preposterous.”

According to Lee, with a modernized approach to data and technology, doctors could better understand diseases and bring precision medicine to fruition.

Globally, head injuries are a growing problem. In the U.S., more than 3 million Americans are admitted to emergency rooms every year after suffering a concussion.

“And concussion rates are rising in other countries, too.

Especially in developing countries like China and India because they

have many more motor vehicles on the roads now. “

That’s radiologist Pratik Mukherjee of the University of California, San Francisco, He says this topic doesn’t get a lot of media attention, unless athletes or military personal suffer head trauma. Even injured people normally ignore minor concussions, usually after they fall down or get into a car accident. But fortunately, there is increasing awareness about concussions.

“You know, having your bell rung, is not necessarily a benign condition and is not something you just walk off like people used to say.”

Undetected and untreated concussions can lead to continued problems like headaches, insomnia, depression, or even to dementia and premature death. For Science Today.

A proof-of-concept study at the University of California, Berkeley has found promise in a pill-sized technology that could lead to painless oral vaccines. Aside from not having to deal with a needle anymore, we asked study leader Dorian Liepmann what are some of the other advantages of a system like this?

"Well, the great thing is we can actually do this at home. You could give this to people so they don’t need to go to a pediatrician. One of my co-investigators suggested that we could actually put this in a lollipop for children. And so they would just hold it in their mouth until the drug was delivered, and then they’d have the rest of the lollipop. You don’t need trained personnel to give you a shot, which is a huge expense. Also, for better distribution to Third World countries or to rural areas, you could actually get your vaccinations done very, very easily and effectively."

The technology, called Mucojet, still needs to go through clinical trials, so it could be 5 to 10 years before it’s available, but Liepmann says he and his team are very excited about its potential impact on healthcare.

This week on Science Today, we learned how a pediatric surgeon is helping to kick-start innovative projects to bring to clinics in an effort to advance children’s health. Dr. Hanmin Lee of UC San Francisco, says even though technology, biology and medicine go hand-in-hand, advanced devices are not always available to the most vulnerable hospital patients because of insufficient funding.

"We organize the engineering of children’s health symposiums to try to bring all the emerging technologies to the benefit of children’s health."

UCSF is involved in developing many such emerging technologies, including different types of monitoring sensors, artificial organs, and little robots - all to help children with a variety of disabilities for their benefit. And when it comes to vaccinations for kids, we spoke to a UC Berkeley’s Dorian Liepmann about their new pill-sized technology that could lead to painless oral vaccines.

"One of my co-investigators suggested that we could actually put this in a lollipop for children. And so they would just hold it in their mouth until the drug was delivered and then they’d have the rest of the lollipop."

While their needleless technology is still proof of concept, Liepmann says some of the advantages – besides no more needle! – would be that you wouldn’t need to pay trained personnel to administer the shot, which is a huge expense. And an easy and effective vaccine like this could lead to better distribution to Third World countries or to rural areas. Liepmann says their technology still needs to undergo clinical trial, so it could be another 5 to 10 years before it’s available, but it sure sounds promising to us! Hear these and other episodes on Science Today. You can subscribe to iTunes or follow us on Soundcloud. I’m Larissa Branin – thanks for listening everyone!