The Vice President for Research (VPR) and the Department of Laboratory Animal Resources (DLAR) at the UT Health Science Center are excited to announce that a significant portion of the animal holding and procedure spaces located on Long Campus will undergo renovation starting this Fall (estimated October - December) to better serve our research community.

The VPR and DLAR recognize the potential inconvenience that this activity may cause, and we appreciate your support and patience during the renovation. Please feel free to contact Gina Pease, Associate Director in DLAR at (210) 567-6151 or pease@uthscsa.edu for any comments and concerns as we prepare for this undertaking. We thank you for your patience and understanding and look forward to working together in our newly refurbished facilities.

In the current biennium, SALSI has awarded $400,000 through two competitive grants.


The Brain Health Clusters in Research Excellence for $100,000 was awarded to Bess Frost, Ph.D. of the UT Health Science Center who is collaborating with Stephen Bach, Ph.D. at UTSA. Another award for $100,000 was granted to Hye Young Lee, Ph.D. at the Health Science Center for collaboration with Todd Troyer, Ph.D. at UTSA on brain health research.


Additionally, the Innovation Challenge grant for $200,000 was awarded to Yidong Chen, Ph.D. at the Health Science Center who is currently working with Yufei Huang, Ph.D. at UTSA on innovative mobile technology solutions for health care.


SALSI is a collaborative partnership established between the Health Science Center and UTSA by the Texas Legislature in 2003 with the mission of funding research in the life sciences. Since its inception, SALSI funding has supported projects that promote collaboration on research in key areas that impact health: neurosciences, regenerative medicine and drug discovery, big data analytics in health care, advanced materials, immunology/infectious diseases and public health policy.

For more information on SALSI funding opportunities visit http://www.utsalsi.org/funding/.

1.      A one-time financial incentive ($5,000) for the Program Director upon submission of a competing (new or renewal) institutional research training grant application.

2.      In the absence of allowable programmatic salary support from the sponsor, 10% salary support for the Program Director will be provided throughout the duration of the award.  For those institutional training grants that provide limited salary support (<10%) for the Program Director, the difference will be provided as described above to reach 10% salary support.  Salary support will not be provided during no cost extension periods.

Time & Date: 8 a.m. – 5:30 p.m. on September 7, 2016 & 8:30 a.m. – 4 p.m. on September 8, 2016
Location: UTSA Main Campus, JPL Assembly Room (4.04.22)

The UT Health Science Center and UTSA are co-hosting an NIH Multi-IC (NIAID/NCI/NIGMS/NIBIB) Small Business Workshop providing an overview of NIH Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) program.

The two-day workshop will cover topics on NIH scientific review, high priority areas of interest, writing a competitive SBIR/STTR application, how to pitch your business to investors, and unique career opportunities in biomedical entrepreneurship and commercialization.

Register Online at http://1.usa.gov/1YuGGJG


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Annual Conference for Community Engagement and Healthcare Improvement
Date: September 2 - 4, 2016
Location: Wyndham San Antonio Riverwalk
Agenda & Registration

Ms. Patrick-Lake, Interim Director of Participant Engagement for the NIH Precision Medicine Initiative Cohort Program is the keynote speaker at CEHI. Her presentation will be interactive and will address precision medicine, stakeholder engagement, and improving health outcomes.


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Science, Technology & Innovation Reception, STIR presents: 
"DNA Repair Profiling Reveals Nonrandom Outcomes at Cas9-Mediated Breaks" a technical science presentation for faculty, trainees and students.
Time: 1 p.m. - 2 p.m.
Date: September 28, 2016
Location: MARC Buildig, Conference Rm. B, 8300 Floyd Curl Dr.

"Career editing: A CRISPR journey from academia to industry"
Time: 5:30 p.m. - 7:30 p.m.
Date: September 28, 2016
Location: Greehey Children's Cancer Resarch Institute, 8403 Floyd Curl Dr.

The Office of Technology Commercialization will host a reception open to the local research and life sciences community interested in collaborating on the commercialization of Health Science Center technologies.  

Guest speaker, Rachel Haurwitz, Ph.D., Co-founder, President and CEO of Caribou Biosciences, will share her story of innovation and entrepreneurship, covering multiple CRISPR-derived technologies which have applications in genome engineering.

She has a research background in CRISPR-Cas biology, and in 2014, she was named by Forbes Magazine to the "30 Under 30" list in Science and Healthcare. She is also a co-founder of Intellia Therapeutics where she is a member of the board of directors. Haurwitz is an inventor on several patents and patent applications covering multiple CRISPR-derived technologies, and she has co-authored scientific papers in high impact journals characterizing CRISPR-Cas systems. She earned an A.B. in Biological Sciences from Harvard College, and received a Ph.D. in Molecular and Cell Biology from the University of California, Berkeley.
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Society of General Physiologists 70th Annual Meeting & Symposium presents:  "Genetic & animal Models for Ion Channel Function in Physiology and Disease" 
Marine Biological Laboratory, Woods Hole, MA, September 7 - 8, 2016. For details visit www.sgpweb.org 

New & Renewal Research and Institutional Training Awards
(May-June 2016)

Research media coverage, July 2016
(National coverage is in bold type.)

Television

Print/Online

To read more news about our research, visit the Newsroom.

Converting new knowledge and ideas that emerge from research into products and services that impact patient health and well-being remains a strategic focus for our university and UT System. Over the past couple of years, we have developed strategies and identified resources to create stepping stones for a pathway to innovation and commercialization on our campus. The programs launched to date and listed below are fueling a shared vision to create a dedicated space where faculty, clinicians, trainees, and staff can get guidance, mentoring and assistance on medical product development and business startup.  

To support our strategic initiative, a national consultant has been hired by the university to assess the need for a business incubation program (science incubator) to support commercialization of intellectual property developed at the Health Science Center and provide a resource for the creation of new ventures. 

The consultant has conducted a large number of interviews with faculty, students, administrators, and external community and business leaders, and has been charged to identify the best business model for an incubator that complements the efforts of the Office of Technology Commercialization, and raises the visibility of the university as a center of innovation in biomedicine. This October, the business plan will be presented to the university’s leadership and research community.

Current Initiatives on Entrepreneurship:

• In spring 2015, a new course focusing on Biomedical Product Development (INTD 7074) was introduced and over 40 faculty and students have enrolled
• Two workshops on NIH-SBIR/STTR grants, a non-dilutive funding source, have been scheduled in late summer 2016
• Classes on “How to Pitch Your Business” will be offered from 7-8 a.m. on Sept. 7 at the Briscoe Library
• Kick-off September 26, for NSF Innovation Corps Workshop, providing a real-world, hands-on, immersive learning curriculum, in partnership with UT System institutions
• Philanthropic support from the Stella C. Herff Charitable Trust to fund the President’s Translational & Entrepreneurial (PTEF) grant awards
• The Entrepreneur-in-Residence Program provides consultation to faculty and students on how to commercialize their patent portfolio through licenses and startups
• Commercialization Catalysts (Com-CATS), a student organization that has developed an internship and mentorship relationship with the OTC
• Science, Technology, Investors, Reception (STIR), affording faculty inventors to network with one another and meet investors with interest in funding life sciences ventures. STIR events are hosted twice a year.

Trustees of the Max and Minnie Tomerlin Voelcker Fund voted to give Young Investigator Awards totaling $1.35 million to three rising stars at The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio.

The junior faculty members are in the School of Medicine and study cancer. Each will receive $450,000 over the next three years to develop innovative lines of research to make preliminary discoveries that may result in bringing substantial National Institutes of Health-funded research to San Antonio.

“Voelcker Fund awards help junior scientists to establish a track record of success,” William L. Henrich, M.D., MACP, president of the Health Science Center, said. “The focus of our awards in 2016 is cancer, a disease that is, in its complexity, a thousand diseases.”

The latest Voelcker Fund Young Investigator Awards are supporting:

• Elizabeth Leadbetter, Ph.D., assistant professor, Department of Microbiology and Immunology;
• Xiao-Dong Li, Ph.D., assistant professor, Department of Microbiology and Immunology;
• Kexin Xu, Ph.D.,assistant professor, Department of Molecular Medicine, and member of the Cancer Therapy & Research Center at the UT Health Science Center.

Dr. Elizabeth Leadbetter

Vaccines work because they teach the body to remember – and attack – a particular disease. Dr. Leadbetter is studying how to enhance the immune system’s “memory” to identify and attack a disease such as cancer by using nanoparticles that contain a special lipid.

According to Dr. Leadbetter’s initial research, it appears that the lipid-containing nanoparticles activate B cells and natural killer T (NKT) cells to work together to enhance the body’s “memory” of the invading disease. She seeks to harness this to enhance the memory and detection of precancerous changes in the body to prevent the spreading of the disease.

Dr. Xiao-Dong Li

The DNA of tumors is very different from the DNA of healthy cells. Dr. Li has discovered a molecular pathway the immune system uses to recognize and attack abnormal DNA. A vaccine to amplify or boost this pathway could be very effective in fighting cancerous tumors, in addition to fending off viral threats.

Dr. Kexin Xu

Dr. Xu seeks to understand the link between cancer and metabolic diseases such as obesity and diabetes. She focuses on epigenetics, the study of biological processes that switch genes on and off without altering the genetic code itself. Epigenetic changes may be prompted by the environment, diet, stress, aging and other factors.

Dr. Xu is investigating how one particular metabolic pathway orchestrates the epigenetic machinery, which results in abnormal epigenetic patterns in cells, causing cancer and diabetes. Reversing these changes could cure one or both diseases.

Dr. Xu completed her postdoctoral training at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School. In 2015 she received a $250,000 Rising STARs Award from The University of Texas System Board of Regents and a $2 million new faculty recruitment award from the Cancer Prevention & Research Institute of Texas. STARs stands for Science and Technology Acquisition and Retention.

Voelcker Fund support

Since 2007, the Max and Minnie Tomerlin Voelcker Fund has contributed more than $17 million to the Health Science Center.

In addition to the Young Investigator Awards, the Voelcker Fund supports other initiatives at the Health Science Center such as the Voelcker Biomedical Research Academy, which provides an immersive biomedical research education and college preparatory program for San Antonio-area high school students.

The Health Science Center also houses two endowed chairs — The Max and Minnie Tomerlin Voelcker Distinguished University Chair in Targeted Cancer Therapy, held by Tim Huang, Ph.D., professor and chair, Department of Molecular Medicine, and The Max and Minnie Tomerlin Voelcker Endowed Chair in Cancer Health Disparities and Outreach, held by Amelie G. Ramirez, Dr.P.H., professor and interim chair, Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, and director, Institute for Health Promotion Research.

Approximately 5.4 million people in the United States have Alzheimer's disease, which causes problems with memory, thinking and behavior. One of the characteristics of the disease is that a protein called tau forms clumps, or aggregates, in the brain.

"We have identified multiple new cellular processes that go awry in Alzheimer's disease because of pathological tau," said Bess Frost, Ph.D., assistant professor, Barshop Institute for Longevity and Aging Studies, University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio. "Each of these processes that connect tau with brain cell death are potential drug targets. This new knowledge will allow more informed development of therapies for the disease."

Frost will present these new findings at The Allied Genetics Conference, a meeting hosted by the Genetics Society of America.
Read the full story in Science Daily.

The President’s Translational and Entrepreneurial Research Fund (PTEF), which supported by the Stella C. Herff Charitable Trust, provides funding for research inventions that have high potential to be translated into biomedical products.

Proposals are currently being sought from investigators interested in developing their ideas into biomedical products (therapeutics, biologics, devices, software, etc.). Application materials may be obtained by emailing The Office of Technology Commercialization at OTCInfo@uthscsa.edu.

The submission deadline is October 14, 2016. PTEF applications may be submitted to TaShavia Beverly-Prince at beverlyprinc@uthscsa.edu on or before 5 p.m. on October 14, 2016.