Pseudomonas aeruginosais an opportunistic bacterial pathogen responsible for 10% of all nosocomial (hospital-acquired) infections, a leading cause of nosocomial pneumonia in general patient populations, and the leading cause in intensive care patient populations. Since Pseudomonas is often resistant to antibiotics, an infection is life-threatening for compromised individuals such as burn victims, AIDS patients, and patients with cystic fibrosis. Respiratory failure, the leading cause of cystic fibrosis-associated death, results from chronic Pseudomonas infections that lead to lung damage as bacterial toxins attack lung epithelia. This damage then allows the infection to spread beyond the lungs. A secretion/intoxication system present on the bacterial surface transports toxins directly into epithelial cells, and a well-documented inhibition of this system through blockade of the bacterial toxin transport component PcrV provides demonstrable protection against lung injury and increased survival in animal models. Researchers at the University of California, San Francisco have shown that the PcrV protein is a highly effective vaccination agent against Pseudomonas, whether administered before or after infection.

Disease phenotypes are often regulated by interwoven genetic networks. For example, tumor genomes exhibit an extensive variety of genetic and epigenetic changes involved in tumor initiation, metastasis and ultimately, resistance to therapy. Combination therapy to target multiple pathways, as opposed to only single ones, can enhance treatment efficacy. Discovering effective combination therapies for human diseases is challenging with existing methods, due to the cost, effort, and labor required to construct and analyze each combination. There is a need for technological advances to accelerate the identification of effective combinatorial therapies. CRISPR has emerged as a new tool to systemically interrogate cancer genomes and set up the potential for personalized medicine. Personalized medicine is based upon the concept that individual differences can be identified and used to the patient’s advantage for therapy.

This invention uses sequencing of microbiota community for diagnosis and treatment of lung and nasal dysbiosis.

Researchers at the University of California, Davis have developed a new flight mechanism that offers vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) capability and cruising speeds comparable with fixed wing unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV).

This invention is a nanostraw device that is built upon microdevice technology for oral drug delivery. It is the first example of a microdevice for oral drug delivery, with the drug sealed in by a semi-permeable membrane for (1) in-solution drug loading, and tunable drug release, (2) increased bioadhesion for prolonged drug exposure, and (3) protection of drug from outside biomolecules.

This invention describes a first-of-a-kind methodology using micro- and nanofabrication techniques to create polymeric microscale devices that are asymmetrically coated with nanowires. The nanowire coating provides an inherent high-throughput, low-waste drug loading mechanism, enhanced cytoadhesion, and may potentially interact with epithelial tissue to enhance drug permeation.

UCLA researchers have identified and characterized mTORC2-specific inhibitors useful as a novel treatment of glioblastoma.

UCLA researchers in the Department of Electrical Engineering have developed a new design of read and write circuitry using negative differential resistance devices to improve the performance of resistive memories.