Research Focus Areas

Listed alphabetically by subject area. Please send updates to mrattana@health.ucsd.edu. 

4D Nucleome Research

4D Nucleome Research Center and Organizational Hub at UC San Diego: Principal Investigator Shu Chien, MD, PhD

Aging

Molecular mechanisms of aging; impact of inflammation on the brain; chronic diseases of aging.

• Division of Geriatrics
• Stein Institute for Research on Aging

Allergy and Immunology

Molecular and cell biology of allergy; immune-mediated and inflammatory diseases; mucosal immunity.

• Clinical Trials: Center for Innovative Therapy
• Division of Rheumatology, Allergy and Immunology

Angioedema

• Division of Rheumatology, Allergy & Immunology
  • Bruce Zuraw, MD, chief of the division and inaugural holder of the US Hereditary Angioedema Association (HAEA) Endowed Chair and director of the first U.S. HAEA Angioedema Center at UC San Diego Health. 
    

Arthritis and Inflammatory Disease

Pathogenesis and treatment.

• Center for Innovative Therapy
• Division of Rheumatology, Allergy and Immunology

Asthma/COPD

• Clinical Trials Center
• Division of General Internal Medicine
• Division of Physiology
• Division of Pulmonary, Critical Care & Sleep Medicine
  • Alpha 1-Antitrypsin Deficiency - UC San Diego is an Alpha-1 Foundation Clinical Resource Center
• Division of Rheumatology, Allergy and Immunology

Atherosclerotic Heart Disease

• Division of Cardiology
• Division of Endocrinology and Metabolism
• UC San Diego Health: Open Clinical Trials 

Bioengineering

• Dr. Shu Chien
• Division of Medical Genetics
  • Trey Ideker, PhD
    

• Institute of Engineering in Medicine
  • Ju Chen, PhD
  • Shu Chien, MD
    

Biomedical Informatics

Bioinformatics; clinical informatics; global health informatics and telemedicine; infrastructure, privacy technology and health information exchange.

• Division of Biomedical Informatics - current research projects

Core bioinformatics expertise to manage and analyze large molecular datasets, especially from next-generation sequencing. Special emphasis in genomics, systems biology and personalized medicine.

• Center for Computational Biology and Bioinformatics (CCBB)
• Division of Medical Genetics
  • Dr. Jill Mesirov
    • GenomeSpace data analysis platform
      

Bone Marrow Transplantation

See Hematology-Oncology

Cancer

See Hematology-Oncology

Cardiology

Atherosclerosis; cardiac electrophysiology; cardiac mechanics; heart failure; integrins in inflammation; interventional cardiology; molecular cardiology; physiology and pharmacology.

• Division of Cardiovascular Medicine
  • Research Activities
  • UC San Diego Health: Open Clinical Trials in Cardiovascular Diseases
    

Clinical Decision Support

Biomedical Informatics, an academic division in the UC San Diego School of Medicine and a department of UC San Diego Health.

Clinical Trials

• Center for Innovative Therapy
• Clinical and Translational Research Institute - Studies Recruiting Volunteers
• Clinical Trials Office at the Moores Cancer Center

Dementia

• Division of Geriatrics
• UC San Diego/Salk Center for Academic Research and Training in Anthropogeny (CARTA)
  

Diabetes

Etiology, treatment, and prevention; molecular mechanisms; pathogenesis of diabetic kidney disease; the contribution of the kidney to cardiovascular disease in diabetes and obesity.

• Institute for Diabetes and Metabolic Health
  • Center for Clinical Diabetes Care
  • Center for Type 1 Diabetes Research
  • Center for Human Nutrition
  • Center for Integrative and Molecular Metabolism
• Division of Endocrinology and Metabolism
  • Research and Clinical Trials
• Division of Nephrology-Hypertension
  • Novel Paradigms in Diabetic Complications (NIH Type 1 Diabetes Targeted Research Award) 
• Center for Metabolic Research, VA San Diego Healthcare System
• Glycemic control in inpatients
• Division of Hospital Medicine
• Sanford Stem Cell Clinical Center
• Clinical Trials

Digestive Diseases

Celiac disease; gastrointestinal infection; intestinal inflammatory disease.

• Division of Gastroenterology
  • Gastroenterology Training Grant
  • Research and Clinical Trials
• Endoscopic Research
  
  • Colon cancer screening quality improvement
  • Pancreatic cancer diagnosis and prevention
  • New endoscopic devices
  • Natural orifice translumenal endoscopic surgery (NOTES)
  • Small intestinal imaging
  • Endoscopic treatment of early esophageal cancer

Endocrinology and Metabolism

Obesity; lipid research; pituitary; thyroid; signal transduction; transcription; calcium and bone; reproductive endocrine diseases.

• Division of Endocrinology and Metabolism
  • Research and Clinical Trials
  • Fellowship Training

Endoscopy

Division of Gastroenterology

Gastroenterology

Division of Gastroenterology

Genomic Medicine

• Division of Medical Genetics
• Division of Regenerative Medicine

Geriatrics

Molecular mechanisms of aging; impact of inflammation on the brain.

• Division of Geriatrics
  

Global Public Health

HIV/AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis; risk factors, transmission, treatment, prevention, border health, health care utilization, STDs, viral hepatitis, substance use, migration and health, and social justice.

• Division of Biomedical Informatics - Active research projects
• Division of Infectious Diseases & Global Public Health - Active research projects

Glycobiology

• Glycobiology Research and Training Center

Heart Failure

Division of Cardiovascular Medicine

• Advanced Heart Failure Fellowship Training Program
• Research

Hematology-Oncology

Experimental therapeutics; hematological malignancies; chronic lymphocytic leukemia; stem cell biology; tumor biology/immunology; hematopoiesis; platelet-vascular biology.

• Divisions of Hematology-Oncology and Bone Marrow Transplantation
• Sanford Stem Cell Clinical Center
  • Clinical Trials
• UC San Diego Health
  • Find a Clinical Trial
• UC San Diego Moores Cancer Center
  • Clinical Trials
  • Research Training
    

Hepatitis

See Liver Disease

Hepatology

• Division of Gastroenterology

HIV/AIDS

Pathogenesis, prevention, risk factors, transmission, treatment.

• AIDS Research Institute
  • HIV research, bioinformatics and information technologies - Douglas D. Richman, MD, Director, AIDS Research Institute
• Antiviral Research Center
  • UCSD Department of Medicine HIV/AIDS Clinical Trials Unit (NIH Cooperative Agreement)
• Center for AIDS Research (NIH Research Center Core Grant)
• Division of Infectious Diseases & Global Public Health
  • Training Program in Substance Use, HIV and Related Infections (NIH Training Grant)
  • Active Projects 

Hospice

Research and training in hospice and palliative care - Divisions of Hematology-Oncology and Bone Marrow Transplantation

Hospital Medicine

Glycemic control, venous thromboembolism prevention, transitions of care.

• Division of Hospital Medicine
  • Innovations Reducing Hyper- and Hypoglycemic Events in Inpatients (NIH Research Demonstration/Dissemination Project)

Hypertension

• Division of Nephrology-Hypertension
  

Infectious Diseases

HIV and opportunistic infections; drug resistance; hepatitis B and C; Leptospira; malaria; tuberculosis; microbial pathogenesis; international medicine; neurovirology; prevention; tropical medicine; parasitology.

• Division of Gastroenterology
• Division of Infectious Diseases & Global Public Health
  • Research Activities
  • Dr. Robert Schooley
  • Dr. Davey Smith
    
  • Dr. Joseph Vinetz
    
• HIV Neurobehavioral Research Center
• Division of Pulmonary, Critical Care and Sleep Medicine

See Also HIV/AIDS

Inflammatory Bowel Disease

Developing new biotechnology therapies; conducting multicenter clinical trials; clinical pharmacology of medications used in treatment.

• Division of Gastroenterology
  • William J. Sandborn, MD

See Also Digestive Diseases

Kidney Disease / Kidney Injury

Development; physiology and pathophysiology; hypertension; immuno-pathogenesis and transplantation; function in early diabetes and diabetic nephropathy; acute injury and outcomes research; failure.

• Division of Nephrology-Hypertension
  • Acute Kidney Injury Research
    • Ravi Mehta, MD, FACP
  • Diabetic Kidney Disease
    • Kumar Sharma, MD, FAHA

Leukemia, Myeloproliferative Disorders

Cancer clinical trials, cellular-immunotherapy, diagnostics, experimental therapeutics, gene immunotherapy, regenerative medicine, stem cell medicine, tumor biology.

• Clinical Trials
  • CIRM Alpha Stem Clinic at UC San Diego Health
  • Sanford Stem Cell Clinical Center Clinical Trials
    

• Divisions of Hematology-Oncology and Bone Marrow Transplantation
  • Januario E. Castro, MD
  • Catriona Jamieson, PhD, MD
  • Thomas J. Kipps, MD, PhD

• Division of Regenerative Medicine
  • Catriona Jamieson, PhD, MD

Lipid Research

• Division of Endocrinology and Metabolism
• LIPID Metabolites And Pathways Strategy (LIPID MAPS) Consortium
  

Liver Disease

Epidemiology and biomarkers for liver disease; multi-targeted therapies for liver cancer; molecular pathogenesis of fibrotic liver disease and the genetic basis of liver disorders;
progression of chronic liver diseases; hepatic fibrosis; alcoholic liver disease; liver failure; hepatitis B and C; clinical trials; treatments; transplantation; population screening; vaccination.

• Division of Gastroenterology
  • Research
    • Microbiome as Therapeutic Target in Alcoholic Hepatitis (NIH Cooperative Agreement)
      
    • Dr. Samuel Ho
    • Rohit Loomba Lab
      
    • Liver Epidemiology Fellowship
    • Transplant Hepatology Fellowship
• Division of Infectious Diseases & Global Public Health

Medical Genetics

Genomics and personalized medicine; systems biology.

Division of Medical Genetics ​​

• Trey Ideker, PhD
• NDEx - The Network Data Exchange, A Network Commons for Biologists
• A Systems Approach to Mapping the DNA Damage Response
• Cytoscape, A Modeling Platform for Biomolecular Networks
• Comparative Analysis of Genetic Interaction Networks
• National Resource for Network Biology
• San Diego Center for Systems Biology: From Maps to Models
• Systems Biology and Integrative Networks Core, Chronic HIV Infection and Aging in NeuroAIDS (CHAIN) Center
• Jill Mesirov, PhD
• GenomeSpace data analysis platform

Network Approaches to Identify Cancer Drivers from High-Dimensional Tumor Data (NIH Early Independence Award to Hannah Carter, PhD)

Training Program in Basic and Clinical Genetics (NIH Training Grant)

Nonalcoholic Fatty Liver Disease (NAFLD)

• NAFLD Research Center led by Rohit Loomba, MD, MHSc, Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology

Obesity

• Division of Endocrinology and Metabolism
• Division of Gastroenterology
• Division of Nephrology-Hypertension
  

Palliative Medicine

• Division of Hematology-Oncology and Bone Marrow Transplantation 
• Moores Cancer Center
• Ongoing clinical trials

Pancreatic Cancer

• UC San Diego Health Researchers Join Pancreatic Cancer "Dream Team" - Department of Pharmacology, Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences; Department of Medicine and Department of Surgery; Moores Cancer Center
• Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology

Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine

COPD; drug-resistant tuberculosis; pulmonary function during weightlessness; respiratory biology; sleep medicine.

• Division of Pulmonary, Critical Care and Sleep Medicine
• NASA Laboratory studies

See Also Division of Physiology

Quality Improvement

Division of Hospital Medicine

Regenerative Medicine

• Moores Cancer Center
• Division of Regenerative Medicine
• Sanford Stem Cell Clinical Center and Sanford Consortium for Regenerative Medicine

Rheumatic Diseases

Biology of immunologic and inflammatory diseases; pathogenesis and treatment of rheumatoid arthritis.

• Center for Innovative Therapy
• Division of Rheumatology, Allergy and Immunology
  • Rheumatic Diseases Research Training Grant (NIH Training Grant)

Sleep Medicine

The pathogenesis of sleep apnea; metabolic/cardiovascular complications of sleep disorders; mechanical ventilation in acute respiratory distress syndrome.

Division of Pulmonary, Critical Care & Sleep Medicine

• Jess Mandel, MD
  

Smoking and Health

• Using NRT and Quitline Services to Help Hospitalized Smokers Stay Quit (NIH Research Program – Cooperative Agreement)

Systems Biology

Division of Biomedical Informatics
Division of Medical Genetics

Tropical Medicine

Brucellosis, Leptospira, malaria, Plasmodium vivax.

• Dr. Joseph Vinetz

Tuberculosis

• Drug Resistance
  • Division of Infectious Diseases & Global Public Health
  • Division of Pulmonary, Critical Care & Sleep Medicine

Vascular Diseases and Thrombosis

Deep vein thrombosis; chronic thrombotic venous disease.

• Division of Pulmonary, Critical Care and Sleep Medicine
• Division of Rheumatology, Allergy, and Immunology

DVT prevention in inpatients:

• Division of Hospital Medicine