News

The Lundquist Institute (TLI) start-up company, Vitalex Biosciences, has been awarded an SBIR Phase 2 grant from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) at the National Institutes of Health. The grant is for Vitalex’s VX-01, a monoclonal antibody (mAB) program targeting the debilitating indication of the fungal disease, mucormycosis. This serious fungal infection often occurs in people who are immunocompromised and is spreading throughout the world. Mucormycosis is only curable when diagnosed in its early stages.

The study showed that antibody combination provides strong protection against severe COVID-19 in large international trial. A treatment combining two antibodies against the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 strongly protected high-risk people with early COVID-19 symptoms from hospitalization and death in an international Phase 2/3 clinical trial. The trial enrolled more than 800 non-hospitalized patients with COVID-19 at high-risk of progression of the disease in the United States and five other countries.

The Lundquist Institute (TLI) now has a vaccine candidate to combat the drug-resistant cause of healthcare acquired infections, the fungus Candida auris. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has called this fungus the cause of severe health infections and a serious global threat. This fungal pathogen results in the deaths of 30-70% of those infected.

The 19th Annual Lundquist Legends tradition continued in 2022 with the recognition of two of its most outstanding investigators: Dr. Scott Filler and Dr. Darrell Harrington. Both Legends have enjoyed a long affiliation with UCLA as they both graduated from the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and then came to and stayed for their whole careers at Harbor-UCLA and the Lundquist Institute. This year’s event took place at the Institute’s Medical Research Laboratory on the Institute campus and was also livestreamed online on December 7th.

The Lundquist Institute for Biomedical Innovation at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center has received a $1 million gift from the Stanley W. Ekstrom Foundation to investigate the progression rates of low attenuation plaque under the influence of Colchicine as compared to placebo. This gift will directly support the work of Dr. Matt Budoff, a Lundquist Investigator whose research is devoted to advancing procedures that can help doctors identify patients early that are at high-risk for cardiac events and progression of atherosclerosis.

Dr. Eric Daar, Investigator at The Lundquist Institute for Biomedical Innovation at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, is the co-principal investigator for the $4 million National Institute of Mental Health grant that supported research which found that HIV patients whose drug regimen was monitored by an innovative ingestible sensor system were more adherent to antiretrovirals (ARVs) and, in turn, experienced lower viral loads.

Pictured (left to right): Dr. David Meyer, TLI President, Steve Nissen, TLI Board Member, Dr. Matt Budoff, Farima & Joe Czyzyk (donors), and Philanthropist Richard Lundquist. 

Dr. Marc Swidergall’s paper, “IL-23 signaling prevents ferroptosis-driven renal immunopathology during candidiasis,” has been published in Nature Communications. The paper, published online on September 22, covers research by Dr. Swidergall and his colleagues on Candida infection and inflammation and how ferroptotic cell death presents a new avenue to tackle the infection. They report that recognition of the fungal cell wall component β-glucan promotes renal immunopathology by reducing the cytokine IL-23 during disseminated candidiasis.

This highly prestigious ASM fellowship supports doctoral graduate students interested in the microbial sciences and who seek mentorship in navigating their career trajectory. Barbarino and Alqarihi were selected from a pool of thousands of applicants for this esteemed ASM Fellowship. They will be mentored for the year by seven highly accomplished mentors in various areas of microbiology.