The University of California, San Diego (UCSD)

The School of Medicine opened in 1968 and is currently ranked 5th in the nation among public medical schools by U.S. News and World Report – the youngest school among the top 5 public schools. UCSD ranks 4th in the nation in research impact in a report compiled by the Institute for Scientific Information. The health sciences categories include: Clinical Medicine, #2; Pharmacology, #3; Molecular Biology and Genetics, #4; Biology and Biochemistry, #8; Psychology and Psychiatry, #10. UCSD School of Medicine faculty rank #1 in the nation in federal research funding per faculty member (#1 in clinical research and #3 in basic research), #1 in Family Medicine, Neurosciences, Surgery and #2 in Anesthesiology, Ophthalmology, Orthopedics, Pediatrics, Pharmacology, and Psychiatry. Over 40 Health Sciences faculty are members of the National Academies. UCSD School of Medicine is 16th overall among all research medical schools. UCSD is 6th among primary medical schools. The Drug and Alcohol Abuse program ranks 7th, the AIDS program ranks 8th and the Internal Medicine program ranks 17th. UCSD School of Medicine is 15th in the nation in total NIH funding with 7 departments in the top 10 when ranked against peer departments. UCSD's General Clinical Research Center is one of the nation's top-funded. Since FY 1996, federal research dollars to UCSD have increased from $247 million to $550 million. San Diego ranks #3 in the nation in NIH funding, behind Boston and New York, with UCSD a San Diego leader in NIH support. More than 60 biotechnology spin-off companies are associated with Health Sciences faculty and discoveries. Of the entire UC system's top 5 commercialized technologies for the last fiscal year, 2 are innovations from the UCSD School of Medicine. UCSD physicians account for 24 of the 29 San Diegans selected for "America's Top Doctors." In a recent "San Diego's Best Doctors" listing, more than 80 are UCSD physicians, 1/3 of all those listed.

UCSD is ranked #7 in the country in knowledge creation by Change Magazine. Over 150 San Diego companies have been founded by faculty or graduates of UCSD, or based on technology developed at UCSD, with revenues exceeding $2 billion. More than 60 are biotechnology companies, over 1/3 of the region's biotech industry, with San Diego recognized as the third largest biotech hub in the nation. 30% of biotechs spun off from UCSD have been acquired or have gone public with an average liquidation value of $150 million. Direct Licensing of UCSD Technologies total since 1996: Disclosures 1,489; Patents Filed 887; US Patents Issued 293; Agreements Licenses 2,517.

The National Research Council ranks UCSD 10th in the nation in the excellence of its graduate programs and faculty quality. Among programs rated among the best in the U.S. are the School of Medicine-based program in neurosciences, ranked #1; both biomedical engineering and physiology, ranked #2; pharmacology, #3; genetics, #6; cell and developmental biology, #7, and molecular biology, #9. UCSD's six Nobel Laureates include the Dean for Scientific Affairs Emeritus of the School of Medicine, who is also one of seven National Medal of Science winners to have served on the faculty. UCSD ranks #7 in the nation in National Academy of Science members, with 67 total members. The medical school faculty also includes a Lasker Medal winner, 21 Institute of Medicine members, and a former director of the National Institute of Mental Health.

The prior Vice Chancellor of Health sciences and Dean of the Medical School, Ed Holmes, MD, joined UCSD with the mission to increase research production and stimulate translation of discoveries to the clinic. He was instrumental in recruiting the Chair of The Department of Radiology, William G. Bradley, MD/PhD who joined our faculty in May 2002. He was given a sizable package to upgrade our clinical facilities and build the research infrastructure. Since July 2002, we have quadrupled the research space from 9,000 to over 40,000 square feet, have more than doubled the faculty, mostly in research, and increased our research funding from $1.7M/yr to over 15M/yr. We have also increased the number of residency slots from 6 to 8 residents per year and have dedicated 2 slots/year for the 5-year program as of July 2005 that includes a year of research and we begin admitting 3/year starting in 2009.

UCSD Healthcare has maintained a positive bottom line since 1996, and hospital census has increased by 36%, or 90 patients a day, despite the stiff competition from other San Diego private healthcare institutions. UCSD Healthcare includes two hospitals licensed for a combined 531 beds, with approximately 21,000 annual admissions, and the UCSD Medical Group, the physician practice of UCSD faculty, with 476,000 outpatient visits annually.

The School of Medicine has over 700 faculty members, 502 medical students, 51 MD/PhD students, 492 post-doctoral fellows, 278 PhD students, and 618 interns and residents. The School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences entered its first class in September 2002. Total enrollment by September 2005 will be 240 PharMD and 60 PhD students, and 30 pharmacy residents.

The UCSD Cancer Center is one of 41 centers nationwide designated as a Comprehensive Cancer Center by the National Cancer Institute. The School of Medicine and the Cancer Center emphasize translational research. Sixty percent of the total research funding of Cancer Center members is for research involving human subjects or human tissue. UCSD has more than 400 active NIH-sponsored clinical research projects or projects using human tissues and over 370 commercially sponsored clinical trials, including over 20 sponsored by San Diego-based biotech firms, and about 70 by California companies. The Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research and Howard Hughes Medical Institute have centers on the UCSD campus.

UCSD is affiliated with the San Diego VA Healthcare System, which provides care and services to more than 38,000 veterans in San Diego and Imperial Counties. The top VA Medical Center in the nation in research funding, it is a center for research and clinical activity for UCSD faculty, and serves as a teaching hospital for UCSD's interns and residents.

The Keck Center for Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging

The Center for Functional MRI is a 7,000 sq. ft. imaging resource for the San Diego scientific community dedicated solely for research. The Center, located adjacent to the Basic Science Building and the animal vivarium, houses two General Electric 3T whole body imagers and a 7T rodent imager that has been retrofitted with a GE console. Since the platform is compatible with the 3T systems at the MR Research Laboratory, the clinical 3T system at the Cancer Center and the planned major expansion of MR imaging equipment at UCSD's clinical sites, the Center is a resource in which animal and human studies can be performed within the same scanner hardware and software environment, and in which the research systems are seamlessly compatible with the clinical systems in UCSD's hospitals. This facilitates the translation of basic research to the clinic. This also ensures that new pulse sequences developed on any of the scanners is easily ported to the other research and clinical systems.

The Center has four magnet bays allowing for an additional magnet to be installed. It contains a machine and an electronics shop for RF and gradient coil construction and three animal preparation/holding rooms. It has offices for the faculty, post-doctoral fellows and students.

The two identical GE Signa EXCITE 3.0T whole-body imaging systems have a short bore design that is 60cm in diameter. The gradient system provides two gradient options (“TwinSpeed”): 1) Zoom mode, with 40mT/m maximum gradient strength and a slew rate of 150 T/m/s, and 2) whole-body mode, with 23 mT/m maximum gradient strength and a slew rate of 80 T/m/s. They are equipped with standard and custom phased-array coild to support the research effort in fMRI and other programs. Both systems have capabilities for 1H, 31P and 13C spectroscopy. The rodent 7T (21 cm bore) animal system consists of a Magnex magnet equipped with Signa EXCITE III core system electronics and operating environment. The instrument is capable of multi-nuclear imaging and spectroscopy. Small animal support system is integrated with the scanner for anesthesia and physiologic monitoring and gating.

In-vivo Cellular and Molecular Center and Small Animal Imaging Resource

Molecular Imaging team and Facilities

The molecular imaging program includes the imaging scientists Robert Mattrey, MD as the director and William Eckelman, PhD, David Hall, PhD, Thilo Hoelscher, MD, Carl Hoh, MD, Yuko Kono, MD, PhD, Dmitri Simberg, PhD, and David Vera, PhD, and several basic scientists in biological and physical sciences including Denis Carson, MD, David Cheresh, PhD, Sadik Esener, PhD, Roger Tsien, PhD, and Judith Varner, PhD. The research laboratories are located in the Clinical Teaching Facility (CTF) on the Hillcrest campus that occupies 2,400 sq. ft., over 3,000 sq. ft. at the Moores/UCSD cancer center that includes the Small Animal Imaging Resource, wet labs, photonics and radiochemistry laboratories, and approximately 2,000 sq. ft at the UCSD Center for Molecular Imaging. The Cancer Centers provides extensive resources supporting cell culture and molecular biology tools as well as the extensive core services of the comprehensive cancer center. The CTF facility is focused on ultrasound contrast development and testing and animals imaging the size of rabbits or larger. The Cancer Center facility space is focused in addition to rodent imaging, on probe development for PET, SPECT, MR, and optical imaging. The UCSD Center for Molecular Imaging is focused on clinical and large animal PET imaging and radiochemistry. The team is supported by several technologists to prepare, image and care for animals as well as chemistry and manufacturing and IT personnel.

The UCSD Center for Molecular Imaging

This facility is off campus located approximately 2.5 miles from Thornton Hospital and the Cancer Center. It houses a Siemens EXACT HR+ and a CTI RDS-111 cyclotron that is currently capable of generating F-18, N-13 and C-11. The facility has fully equipped 1,500 s.f. radiochemistry laboratory and a dedicated 600 s.f. research radiochemistry laboratory to produce FDG, published and new compounds for clinical PET imaging. It is networked with UCSD to transfer images to PACS and other workstations for data processing. Software tools have been developed in IDL6.0 for image fusion to CT and MR studies and to allow sophisticated region of interest analysis in DICOM, ECAT7x, and INTERFILE image formats in static and dynamic image acquisitions including tracer kinetic modeling using state-space equations. The HR+ PET scanner will be upgraded to a Siemens 16 slice PET/CT in the coming year. The Animal Subjects Committee approved Standard Operating Procedures when animals are imaged at this facility that cover animal transportation and care as well as cleansing of equipment.

The CTF Hillcrest Laboratory

This facility that is across from the UCSD Hillcrest Medical Center is dedicated to contrast media development and testing with ultrasound contrast media emphasis. It houses a spray-drying facility for ultrasound contrast media development as well as fluoroscopy, high-resolution x-ray imaging, ultrasound imaging, and a fully equipped emulsification and microbubble production laboratory. A large water tank is maintained that is equipped with transducers, micro-positioning and hydrophones to support in-vitro ultrasound experiments as well as sonothrombolysis and transcranial imaging and instrumentation.

The Small Animal Imaging Resource

The imaging facility is housed adjacent to the vivarium in the Moores Comprehensive Cancer Center that is across from Thornton Hospital on the La Jolla east campus. The following instruments comprise the rodent imaging facility:

In both the Cancer Center and the fMRI center, an isolation room is available to house animals for longitudinal (non-terminal) studies or from outside facilities. Standard Operating Procedures have been approved by the UCSD Animal Subjects Committee for the transfer of mice and rats from non-UCSD institutions into the Cancer Center and Basic Science Building Vivaria. Across the hall from the Small Animal Imaging facility are two laboratories one for photonics research equipped with a near infrared, high output power, wavelength-tunable laser (MaiTai™ wideband from SpectraPhysics) and a gated-intensified CCD camera (Picostar HR from LaVision), and the other is a radiopharmaceutical laboratory that is equipped with a lead-lined fume hood, a hot cell, a mini hot cell, a decay cabinet, and the necessary chemical and quality control equipment to label agents with nuclear or F-18 reporters. F-18 is transported from the cyclotron at the UCSD Center for Molecular Imaging.

UCSD Radiology Imaging Laboratory

This is a 15,000 sq. ft. facility located approximately 2 miles from the La Jolla east and west campuses that contains offices for faculty, postdoctoral fellows and support staff, wet and dry laboratories and houses the Brain Observatory, Magnetoencephalography (MEG), Muscle Imaging & Modeling Laboratory, Pulmonary Imaging, and the Radiogenomics programs. The facility is currently equipped with a state-of-the-art whole-head MEG instrument (VectorView from Elekta/Neuromag) as well as GE 1.5T Excite system that is matched to those of our existing GE research and clinical systems. Both the MEG and the MR systems are strictly for animal and clinical research. The MEG instrument is in a multi-layered magnetic shielded room. The performance of this room is among the best shielded rooms in the world to provide an excellent measurement environment for the Vector-View MEG system. The main focus of the RIL is functional human brain imaging with MR and MEG as well MR pulmonary and cardiac physiologic imaging. The Brain Observatory and Radiogenomics programs focus on genomic and structural mapping of the brain and genomic mapping of cancer.

3T MR Research Laboratory

This new 5,500 sq foot facility is located next to UCSD Magnetic Resonance Institute at the Hillcrest campus, and houses a state-of-the-art GE 3.0T clinical MR imager for dedicated research use. It has a maximum gradient strength of 40mT/m, 16 RF channels, body phased array coils and parallel imaging capability and Ultrashort TE sequences installed with minimal TE of 8 µsec. The research contract covering installation and maintenance of this system includes "evergreen" upgrades to state-of-the-art capability for the next nine years. This instrument is fully compatible with the other 3T magnets at UCSD. The laboratory is also equipped with an engineering shop, a tissue prep room, a patient waiting / exam / prep rooms, in addition to a conference room, an image processing room, a reading room, and offices.

The facility has over ten 2kx2k pixel resolution diagnostic quality gray-scale monitors are available for qualitative review of imaging data connected to the hospital PACS. A fully equipped image processing laboratory with dedicated IT support is available. The laboratory has access to the Siemens 1.5T whole body Symphony clinical system that is located at UCSD MR Institute for research and translation. The scanner has 4 RF channels, gradient strength 40mT/m, with parallel imaging capability. The minimum TE is 80 µsec.

Additional Specific Resources Used by Mentors.

The mentors utilize the resources outlined above but each has their own laboratory space and specialized equipment for their own research. They have office space for their staff and their postdoctoral fellows and students. Listed below in alphabetical order are the additional resources available to each investigator. Commonly used by all investigators are over 92,000 sq.ft. of animal facilities distributed among major facilities at the Hillcrest campus, and at the Basic Science Bldg, Elliot field, Veteran Administration, and Moores/UCSD cancer center on the La Jolla campus and many additional smaller specialized facilities. UCSD is fully accredited by AAALAC and holds a currently approved NIH Assurance and USDA license. Space includes sterile operating rooms, post-surgical recovery rooms, radiology, and diagnostic laboratory services. Care for all research animals is under the supervision of the Campus Office of Veterinary Services, and is staffed by four veterinarians and three animal health technicians.

Clinical Imaging Capabilities

In addition to the above mostly research resources, the mentors performing translational research (Michael Andre, William Bradley, Graeme Bydder, Carl Hoh, Roland Lee, Robert Mattrey, Claude Sirlin, and David Vera) utilize the clinical resources for both larger animals (rabbits and larger) and human subjects (normal volunteers and patient). Of course the clinical resources are primarily used for the care of patients, however, translation of idea from the lab to the clinic ultimately requires implementation of discoveries on the clinical units utilizing larger animals prior to clinical trials.

The Department of Radiology, UC San Diego School of Medicine, had all the basic equipment as well as some advanced imaging systems, but is undergoing a large expansion with a wide range of imaging systems that have and continue to become available. With the addition of the current Chairman in 2002, came a large Radiology renovation package that has been leveraged to provide Radiology investigators and their collaborators with advanced state-of-the-art tools that includes new and updated vascular and non-vascular interventional suites, MR equipment that will ultimate have seven 3-Tesla systems, 4 of which have been installed 3 for research and one clinical in the new Cancer Center. Two MR guided high-intensity focused ultrasound systems, one for body applications installed with the 3T MR scanner at the Cancer Center and the other will be for head applications to be installed within the year. The Clinical facilities perform nearly 230,000 studies/year with another nearly 100,000 exams performed at the VA Medical Center. Radiology provides all of the imaging and intervention services except for echocardiography and coronary angiography and intervention. Therefore our residents are trained in all the imaging modalities and services and have access to extensive clinical research opportunities.

The UCSD Medical Center, Thornton Hospital, and the Moores/UCSD Cancer Center are linked by a Giga-bit ethernet PACS network (Agfa Impax), have numerous multiple monitor diagnostic workstations and seven Lumisys Model 75 film digitizers networked as well as an IDXRAD dictation system and a voice recognition system. PACS by Agfa provides a combined research patient database for image search and retrieval. The San Diego Veteran’s Adiministration Healthcare System is also served by a full Afga Impax PACS system with several VA and UCSD PACS workstations positioned at both facilities to ease patient data access.