News & Media

UCSB Launches New Neuroscience Website Portal
April 29, 2020

Highlighting a campus-wide research effort to understand the nervous system using a broad array of powerful approaches.

Neuron
April 09, 2020

Understanding how the protein tau moves between neurons yields insight into possible treatments for neurodegenerative diseases.

By Sonia Fernandez

In the fight against neurodegenerative diseases such as frontotemporal dementia, Alzheimer’s and Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy, the tau protein is a major culprit. Found abundantly in our brain cells, tau is normally a team player — it maintains structure and stability within neurons, and it helps with transport of nutrients from one part of the cell to another.

Testing for the novel coronavirus requires a series of reactions to find the virus's genetic material from a tissue sample
March 30, 2020

By Sonia Fernandez

In support of efforts to battle the COVID-19 pandemic locally, UC Santa Barbara researchers have donated essential supplies to Cottage Health System, to aid with testing for the novel coronavirus.

October 30, 2018

Few people will have the same high-profile chance to influence the world as directly as James Thomson. Most people will never see their names printed in textbooks or see their work have an influence on politics.

This was the case for Thomson, who made news around the world in Nov. 1998 when he and his team became the first to derive human stem cells from an embryo. Thomson said that he didn’t have time to revel in his accomplishment.

Full article in the link below.

April 05, 2018

A team of doctors, engineers and scientists — including UC Santa Barbara stem cell researchers Dennis Clegg, Lincoln Johnson, Sherry Hikita and Britney Pennington — has published the preliminary results of a first-in-human clinical trial for dry AMD. Four patients received implants consisting of human embryonic stem cell-derived retinal pigment epithelium (RPE), which support light-sensitive photoreceptor cells critical to vision. The phase 1/2A trial, led by Dr. Amir Kashani, is being conducted at the University of Southern California Roski Eye Institute at the campus’s Keck School of Medicine. 

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