:: UCLA TODAY Home

©2004
The Regents of the University of California
 

news in brief

A great start

Nearly 1,000 incoming graduate students attended the first annual New Graduate Students Orientation on Sept. 26 in the Ackerman Grand Ballroom. The event, organized by the Graduate Students Association (GSA) and the Graduate Student Resource Center, offered the new graduate students 24 workshops, a resource fair and tours of the campus led by fellow graduate students. ASUCLA provided gourmet box lunches. “It really showed that when graduate students get together, we can improve the lives of other graduate students,” GSA President Jared Fox said. “I am so glad that we could provide the new graduate students with information about and access to so many different resources on campus.”

AIDS and the brain

A new UCLA/University of Pittsburgh imaging study shows for the first time the selective pattern of destruction inflicted by AIDS on brain regions that control motor, language and sensory functions. High-resolution 3-D color scans created from magnetic resonance images vividly illustrate the damage. Published online Oct. 10 by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the research offers a new way to measure the impact of AIDS on the living brain and reveals that the brain is still vulnerable to infection when patients are receiving highly active antiretroviral therapy. “Two big surprises came out of this study,” said Paul Thompson, first author and an associate professor of neurology at the David Geffen School of Medicine. “First, that AIDS is selective in how it attacks the brain. Second, drug therapy does not appear to slow the damage. The brain provides a sanctuary for HIV where most drugs cannot follow.”

Understanding cancer

Investigators from UCLA’s Jonsson Cancer Center are teaming up with researchers from Caltech, the UCLA Institute for Molecular Medicine and the Institute for Systems Biology (ISB) in Seattle to develop new technologies for early detection and classification of cancers using leading-edge nanotechnology, systems biology and molecular imaging. The collaborative effort, called the Nanosystems Biology Cancer Center at Caltech, is funded through an $18-million, five-year grant from the National Cancer Institute with Caltech’s Jim Heath as principal investigator and UCLA’s Michael Phelps and the ISB’s Lee Hood as co-principal investigators. The new alliance will develop technologies “that will produce a paradigm shift in the understanding of the fundamental molecular mechanisms of cancer,” said Phelps, Norton Simon Professor, chairman of the UCLA Molecular and Medical Pharmacology Department and director of the Institute for Molecular Medicine. “New nanotechnologies and molecular imaging biomarkers will be developed to define how cells are re-programmed from mutated genes and proteins to progressively gain and lose functions that result in cancer.”

$2.4-billion settlement

The UC recently reached a third large settlement in its securities fraud class- action lawsuit against the Enron Corp. and other firms and institutions. The $2.4-billion (in U.S. dollars) agreement with Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (CIBC) brings the total now recovered for investors to more than $7 billion — “more than any other securities case in history,” said James E. Holst, the university’s general counsel. The university is lead plaintiff representing a class of Enron investors who lost tens of billions of dollars. UC alleged that CIBC participated in an elaborate scheme to defraud investors and thereby violated Section 10(b) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and other securities laws. Approved by CIBC directors, the settlement is subject to approval by the UC regents and the court. UC will also secure a distribution of approximately $32 million for investors through the bankruptcy proceeding for the LJM2 partnership involved in the Enron scheme. For more details on the Enron lawsuit, see www.universityofcalifornia.edu/
news/enron.

Getting ahead

UCLA is helping employees at the UCLA Medical Center advance their careers through several training programs. As of last month, 19 clinical care partners, nursing assistants who provide basic bedside care, upgraded their skills and graduated from the Certified Nurse Assistant Program. Federal funding for their training was provided through the Marina del Rey Work Source Center, UCLA’s partner in this educational venture. The hospital provided flexible scheduling and mentoring, said Salpy Akaragian, a UCLA clinical education specialist who is working on career mobility programs for staff. In addition, using UCLA funds, two licensed vocational nurses (LVNs) completed their associate degrees in the Nursing-RN Program at Santa Monica College. In December, more than 40 employees who are certified nurse assistants will begin a training program to become LVNs.