Biotech Briefing: Two San Diego Scientists Featured on Time’s Health Care 50 List

Plus: Ionis Research Leader Recognized for Breakthrough in Neurodegenerative Disease Treatments

Reports + Research

Two San Diego Scientists on Time’s Health Care 50 List

TIME magazine’s Health Care 50—the magazine’s inaugural list of the 50 most influential people in health care—included Steffanie Strathdee, Ph.D., Associate Dean of Global Health Sciences at UC San Diego School of Medicine and Juan Carlos Izpisua Belmonte, Ph.D., Professor at the Salk Institute. Both were recognized under the Treatments category for solving superbugs and closing the organ deficit, respectively. The San Diego Union-Tribune reports that Dr. Strathdee “stirred international headlines when she used an experimental cocktail of viruses to save the life of her dying husband.” Dr. Izpisua Belmonte was recognized by TIME because of his approach to growing human organs without relying on human donors.

Ionis Research Leader Recognized for Breakthrough Neurodegenerative Disease Treatments

Frank Bennett, Ph.D., senior vice president of research at Ionis Pharmaceuticals received two awards this month for his pioneering work in the development of treatments for neurodegenerative diseases, which have proved especially hard to target with drugs. Dr. Bennett was awarded the 2019 Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences, dubbed the “Oscars of Science,” for his work on Spinraza, a drug against spinal muscular atrophy. The second award, the 2018 Leslie Gehry Brenner Prize for Innovation in Science, was given for his work developing antisense therapies for Huntington’s disease.

La Jolla Institute Receives $4.5 Million Cancer Moonshot Award

The funding will be used to advance personalized cancer vaccines and cellular therapies for the treatment of head and neck cancer. Scientists and clinicians from La Jolla Institute and UC San Diego Moores Cancer Center will collaborate on basic research to find new ways to activate and tune the immune system against cancer. The goal is to develop more effective and personalized cancer immunotherapies.

Read + Listen

POW! Podcast of the Week

Cidara talks with The Bio Report about how they are developing new immunotherapies to activate the immune system to fight infectious diseases.

Events

It’s Happening Here

On October 25, The San Diego Innovation Council (SDIC) is hosting a full day of company presentations and networking at JLABS. The Innovation Showcase will highlight investment opportunities in the software, engineering, clean tech, agricultural, and life sciences sectors.

On October 27, the Cancer Research Institute is offering a free half-day event for cancer patients to learn about immunotherapy. Also on the same day, the public is invited to Explore Salk with family-friendly scientific learning opportunities.

Neuroscience 2018, one of the largest annual conferences for the field, will take place November 3-7 in downtown San Diego