Building a More Resilient World: Salk's campaign for the future

Susan Kaech How T cells remember

Insights Carl Procko Lessons from carnivorous plants

Nuttida Rungratsameetaweemana Drawing from memories

In this issue

Frontiers

Building a More Resilient World: Salk’s Campaign for the Future

The world is facing an array of health-related crises: COVID-19 and other infectious diseases, climate change, neurodegenerative conditions, cancers and many more. To tackle these daunting challenges, the Institute is embarking on a philanthropic campaign to focus on resilience: the biological adaptability that mitigates the effects of aging, resists disease and restores global wellness.

Observations

Susan Kaech – How T cells remember

Salk Professor Susan Kaech, director of the NOMIS Center for Immunobiology and Microbial Pathogenesis, has made it her mission to gain a better understanding of how T cells form, how they exchange molecular signals with the surrounding tissue, and how we can use this knowledge to prevent or treat infections.

Insights

Carl Procko – Lessons from carnivorous plants

Staff Scientist Carl Procko studies Venus flytraps and their close relatives, Sundew plants, to gain insight into the ultra-fast biochemistry of plants and how they can sense touch. It doesn’t hurt that these bug-eating plants are a great way to get kids—and adults—interested in science.

Next Gen

Nuttida Rungratsameetaweemana – Drawing from memories

Nuttida Rungratsameetaweemana, a Salk postdoctoral researcher who studies neuroscience, was introduced to the perplexities of the brain at age 14 during a chance encounter in a hospital waiting room.

President’s Letter

“Our focus on resilience is a shift from studying just the causes of disease to a more holistic approach that focuses on understanding the mechanisms animal and plant biology use to resist disease and protect health.”

Fred H. Gage

President

View President’s letter

Discoveries

Neuroscience

Researchers trace spinal neuron family treeSpinal cord nerve cells branching through the body resemble trees with limbs fanning out in every direction. But this image can also be used to tell the story of how these neurons–their jobs becoming more specialized over time–arose through developmental and evolutionary history. Professor Samuel Pfaff and graduate student Peter Osseward, co-first author of the study, have, for the first time, traced the development of spinal cord neurons using genetic signatures and revealed how different subtypes of the cells may have evolved and ultimately function to regulate our body movements.See All

Cancer

Salk scientists reveal role of genetic switch in pigmentation and melanomaDespite only accounting for about 1 percent of skin cancers, melanoma causes the majority of skin cancer-related deaths. While treatments for this serious disease do exist, these drugs can vary in effectiveness depending on the individual. A study by Professor Marc Montminy and Staff Scientist Jelena Ostojić reveals new insights about a protein called CRTC3, a genetic switch that could potentially be targeted to develop new treatments for melanoma by keeping the switch turned off.See All

Plant Biology

Transforming atmospheric carbon into industrially useful materialsPlants are unparalleled in their ability to capture CO2 from the air, but this benefit is temporary, as leftover crops release carbon back into the atmosphere. A more permanent, and even useful, fate for this captured carbon could be turning plants into a valuable industrial material called silicon carbide (SiC). Professor Joseph Noel, Visiting Scientist James La Clair, and Staff Researcher and first author Suzanne Thomas transformed tobacco and corn husks into SiC and quantified the process with more detail than ever before.See All

Metabolism

Parkinson’s, cancer, type 2 diabetes share a key element that drives diseaseWhen cells are stressed, chemical alarms go off, setting in motion a flurry of activity that protects the cell’s most important players. During the rush, a protein called Parkin hurries to protect the mitochondria, the power stations that generate energy for the cell. Now, Salk Professor Reuben Shaw and colleagues have discovered a direct link between a master sensor of cell stress and Parkin itself. The same pathway is also tied to type 2 diabetes and cancer, which could open a new avenue for treating all three diseases.See All

Regeneration

Chimeric tool advanced for wide range of regenerative medicine, biomedical research applicationsThe ability to grow the cells of one species within an organism of a different species offers scientists a powerful tool for research and medicine. It’s an approach that could advance our understanding of early human development, disease onset and progression and aging; provide innovative platforms for drug evaluation; and address the critical need for transplantable organs. Yet developing such capabilities has been a formidable challenge. Researchers led by Professor Juan Carlos Izpisua Belmonte have now come one step closer toward this goal by demonstrating a new integration of human cells into animal tissue.See All

Aging

Salk scientists reveal how brain cells in Alzheimer’s go awry, lose their identityDespite the prevalence of Alzheimer’s, there are still no treatments, in part because it has been challenging to study how the disease develops. Now, Salk President and Professor Rusty Gage and Jerome Mertens, assistant adjunct professor and first author of a new paper, have uncovered new insights into what goes awry during Alzheimer’s by growing neurons that resemble—more accurately than ever before—brain cells in older patients. And like patients themselves, the afflicted neurons appear to lose their cellular identity. See All

Spotlight

Salk’s Sreekanth Chalasani wins 2021 NPA Gallagher Mentor Award

Salk Associate Professor Sreekanth Chalasani has won the 2021 National Postdoctoral Association (NPA) Gallagher Mentor Award. The announcement was made at the 2021 NPA Annual Conference, which took place April 15 and 16. Chalasani was one of eight finalists for the prestigious award.

Uncommon sense teaching: practical insights in brain science to help students learn

Professor Terrence Sejnowski, head of Salk’s Computational Neurobiology Laboratory, director of the Crick-Jacobs Center and holder of the Francis Crick chair, has published a new book to improve teaching based on the latest research in neuroscience about how students learn.

San Diego Nathan Shock Center announces first grant awardees

The San Diego Nathan Shock Center (SD-NSC) of Excellence in the Basic Biology of Aging, a consortium between the Salk Institute, Sanford Burnham Prebys (SBP) and UC San Diego, recently announced the first class of pilot grant awardees.

Susan Kaech awarded $300,000 grant in honor of The CART Fund founder Roger Ackerman

Congratulations to Professor Susan Kaech on being the recipient of a $300,000 grant in memory of The CART Fund founder Roger Ackerman. The CART Fund is a grassroots nonprofit that supports cutting-edge research and created by Rotarians dedicated to finding a cure for Alzheimer’s disease.

View All

Events

A Milestone Evening to Remember — Symphony at Salk

On August 21, the Salk Institute celebrated the 25th anniversary of Symphony at Salk, welcoming donors and guests back to the campus for the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic began. The event included the official launch of Salk’s Campaign for the Future.

Salk alumni program hosts virtual webinar

In June, the Salk Alumni Program presented a live virtual panel, featuring four Salk alumni who shared their experiences on pursuing academic and industry careers with current Salk scientists.

Institute Council virtual event

On May 20, Salk conducted its sixth annual Institute Council meeting, which highlighted key campus plans and discussed where science is headed in the next 60 years. The meeting featured presentations by Assistant Professors Dannielle Engle and Pallav Kosuri on their labs’ cutting-edge technology and how those technologies will impact the future of scientific research.

Crowdfunding initiative launched at Salk Cancer Summit

On September 1, Conquering Cancer Initiative Chair and Salk Trustee Tim Shoen announced the start of a crowdfunding campaign to raise $100,000 to fund the acquisition of a new, state-of-the-art live-imaging microscope for Salk’s Cancer Center.