Creating a Healthier Future

David A. Cheresh, PhD, Professor and Vice Chair of Pathology; Associate Director for Translational Research. Moores Cancer Center; and Associate Director of the Institute of Engineering in Medicine presents new treatments to prevent and cure cancer as part of IDEaS, celebrating the 50th anniversary of UC San Diego. Series:

DNA

 This is the definitive documentary account of how the human race found the secret of life. It reveals how a gawky American biologist, with a strong interest in birds came to team up with a cocky, but brilliant physicist in Cambridge, England. Against all the odds, they decided to tackle the problem of the century and would succeed in doing so. Was DNA the key to life?Specifically, it was a race between two teams of young scientists working in Britain, as well as the esteemed chemist Linus Pauling, based in California. Already a Nobel laureate, Pauling may have been the favorite, but the discovery would ultimately be made by his British counterparts. Rosalind Franklin and Maurice Wilkins were trying to identify the structure by studying X-ray diffractions of the DNA molecule. But Jim Watson and Francis Crick studied a little bit of everything including, to the consternation of some, the work of their competitors. A few have gone so far as to accuse Watson of stealing Franklin's X-ray work. In any case, Waston and Crick's inquisitive working style ultimately allowed them to determine the DNA structure first, in 1953 an achievement that led to their Nobel Prize in 1962. Franklin passed away in 1958 from cancer.A half-century ago, the two unknown scientists heralded the dawning of a new era in biology and human life as they entered an English pub! Jim Watson and Francis Crick were hardly exaggerating. Their achievements almost single handedly launched the new science of DNA. Interviews with renowned scientists and stunningly realized animations and reconstructions of experiments offer a glimpse of the molecular basis of life.Deoxyribonucleic acid, or DNA, is a nucleic acid that contains the genetic instructions used in the development and functioning of all known living organisms (with the exception of RNA viruses). The main role of DNA molecules is the long-term storage of information. DNA is often compared to a set of blueprints, like a recipe or a code, since it contains the instructions needed to construct other components of cells, such as proteins and RNA molecules. The DNA segments that carry this genetic information are called genes, but other DNA sequences have structural purposes, or are involved in regulating the use of this genetic information.

Neuroimaging Predictors of Survival, Pathology, and Molecular Profiles

Dr. Gutman received his bachelor's in chemistry from Penn State. Following college, he entered the MD/PhD program at Emory and received his PhD in Neuroscience, and MD, in2005.  He subsequently completed a Psychiatry residency at Emory University in June 2009.  Since then, he has joined CCI as a research scientist.  His area of research interest during residency focused on understanding the neurocircuitry of depression, with a focus on advanced neuroimaging techniques including diffusion tensor imaging.  While at CCI, he has focused on the analysis and management of digital pathology and radiology images from Glioblastoma Multiforme (GBM). He holds an appointment as Assistant Professor with the Department of Biomedical Informatics at Emory University School of Medicine

Will Dendritic Cell Subsets Help Us Address the Challenges of Cancer, Autoimmunity & Viral

Dr. Jacques Banchereau is director of the Baylor Institute for Immunology Research in Dallas and holds The Max and Gayle Clampitt Chair for Immunology Research. He received his Ph.D. in biochemistry from the University of Paris in 1980 and later served as director of the Schering Plough Laboratory for Immunological Research near Lyon, France, where he was among the first to discover how to grow human dendritic cells. Dr. Banchereau came to Baylor in 1996 to develop the Institute for Immunology and serves as an adjunct professor at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School. He also serves on the National Institutes of Health's Experimental Immunology Study Section, Center for Scientific Review, in the area of experimental immunology. He has published more than 275 papers and 170 book chapters and reviews in major international journals, reviews manuscripts for various scientific journals and is a frequent speaker at national and international scientific conferences. His research interests center around various areas of immunology and cancer including dendritic cells, novel cytokines and antibody-producing B lymphocytes.