News & Media

New Directions: The National Institutes of Health New Innovator Award opens up avenues of novel research for chemist Irene Chen

October 06, 2016

For microscopic organisms, bacteria are pretty smart. After all, some have outwitted just about every antibiotic ever developed. So the solution to their resistance likely won’t come in the form of new drugs. Hope may lie instead in a completely new direction: bacteriophages.

According to UC Santa Barbara chemist Irene Chen, these viruses, which infect and replicate within bacteria, may hold the key to new and more effective treatments of bacterial infections.

The UC Santa Barbara Current

Basic Research Fuels Advanced Discovery: UCSB neuroscientist Kenneth Kosik discusses the importance of basic cell biology research in advancing the understanding of disease

August 31, 2016

Clinical trials and translational medicine have certainly given people hope and rapid pathways to cures for some of mankind’s most troublesome diseases, but now is not the time to overlook the power of basic research, says UC Santa Barbara neuroscientist Kenneth S. Kosik.

The UC Santa Barbara Current

Connie Frank Fellowship Awarded to Claire Tran

July 21, 2016

Congratulations to Claire Tran from the Irene Chen lab on receiving the Connie Frank Fellowship Award.  This one-time award, which has been made possible by a generous donation, consists of $10,000 in fellowship support for Summer 2016.  

Teaming Up Against Sepsis: UCSB scientists collaborate with multiple institutions to conduct biomedical research on sepsis, thanks to a $12.8 million grant

July 19, 2016

A multidisciplinary team of scientists — including two UC Santa Barbara faculty members — is poised to undertake a major biomedical research initiative focused on the escalating problem of sepsis, the body’s abnormal response to severe infections.

The UC Santa Barbara Current

Mystery Solved? Biologists find a unique version of a filament-forming protein in human cells that insects lack

July 07, 2016

Providing structural support and protection against such conditions as blistering, cataracts and dementia, intermediate filament proteins (IFs) reside in every cell in the human body. In insects, however, IFs are nowhere to be found.

Scientists have posited that in these creatures another kind of protein is responsible for key IF functions; but exactly what kind — or even where to start looking — has been a mystery.

The UC Santa Barbara Current

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