Department of Cell and Tissue Biology at UCSF

We are excited to share that Ace Lewis and Yasmeen Ibrahim will speak at the CTB Department Research In Progress Seminar tomorrow! We look forward to seeing you there!

Wrapping up National Postdoc Appreciation Week with a big thank you to our outstanding postdocs! #ucsfNPAW #UCSFpostdocs

Elliott is postdoc in the Sneddon lab who is excited to uncover novel insights of transcription factor function in pancreatic endocrine development--a project recently funded by a Hillblom Foundation Fellowship award. #ucsfNPAW #UCSFpostdocs

Hector, a postdoc in the Wittmann lab @microtubule.bsky.social, works on chromosome dynamics in cancer and stem cells and is developing methods to identify chromosomes in live mitotic cells as well as interfering with chromosome segregation by optogenetic approaches. #ucsfNPAW #UCSFpostdocs

Ting, a postdoc in the L’Etoile lab @girlsinscience.bsky.social, was recently awarded the BARI Postdoctoral Fellowship to study how nights of poor sleep contribute to age-related memory decline in tiny roundworms, which—like humans—also experience sleep loss and memory deterioration as they age.

Yuwei Zhang joined the Sneddon lab in 2025. Her research accomplishments include using patient-derived stem cells and CRISPR to investigate the molecular basis of β-cell failure, while her current work aims to bioengineer more functional, transplant-ready islets. #ucsfNPAW #UCSFpostdocs

Happy National Postdoc Appreciation Week! We are celebrating all the incredible postdocs in the CTB Department! Thank you for your dedication and the vital role you play in advancing research! We will be introducing some of the postdocs who have joined in 2025. #ucsfNPAW #UCSFpostdocs

Kyle Jacobs, a Biomedical Sciences PhD candidate in the Kutys Lab, is studying mechanisms of blood vessel inflammation and how this inflammation is dysregulated in diseases like atherosclerosis.

Cambria Chou-Freed, a Biomedical Sciences Ph.D. student in Diane Barber and Dan Wagner's labs, is investigating intracellular pH dynamics during zebrafish larval tail regeneration.

We are thrilled that Hydronovo www.hydronovo.com has been awarded an NIH SBIR grant to develop Ceviginate, a new therapeutic for regenerating salivary gland function in debilitating xerostomia. The discoveries for this breakthrough come from the lab of Sarah Knox in CTB!

Karin Shamardani, DDS/PhD candidate, is working with Jeff Bush @jeffbush.bsky.social to study how Efnb1 and the understudied actin-regulator gene Shrm4 interact to control palatal outgrowth and mesenchymal organization during craniofacial development.

The Department of Cell and Tissue Biology has outstanding graduate students from several different programs at UCSF. We are grateful! Over the next several weeks, we will highlight some of these students and share their research focus.

a man and a woman are jumping in the air in a living room . Alt: Seinfeld cast dancing in celebration

Big congrats to Minyoung (Lily) Kim, a DDS/PhD student in my lab @ctbatucsf.bsky.social @ucsfdentistry.bsky.social for receiving her F30 NRSA Notice of Award from NIDCR!!!! 🥳🥳

Alanine Catabolism as a Targetable Vulnerability for MYC-Driven Liver Cancer Liver cancer is a leading cause of cancer-related death world-wide in part due to the shortage of effective therapies, and MYC overexpression defines an aggressive and especially difficult to treat su...

Our latest on cancer metabolism by star student Tonatiuh Montoya @ctbatucsf.bsky.social @ucsfcancer.bsky.social

Liver cancers driven by the MYC oncogene are reliant on alanine metabolism. Alanine is the second most abundant amino acid and can partially substitute for glucose and glutamine. 🧪

We are happy to have @semilc.bsky.social and the Choksi Lab join the CTB community!

CTB welcomes new Assistant Professor Semil Choksi @semilc.bsky.social to the department! The Choksi Lab will study how airway stem cells generate multiciliated cells - and how this process goes wrong in respiratory disease. His lab is opening this August. Visit choksilab.org to learn more!

Excited to be speaking at West Coast SDB!

Thanks Stephanie Woo @itsthewoolab.bsky.social, Frank Macabenta, and Jaimie Van Norman for organizing!!

Giulia Viola, Torsten Wittmann @microtubule.bsky.social and colleagues @ctbatucsf.bsky.social use protein nanocages to benchmark fluorescent proteins in live cells.
Highlight: journals.biologists.com/jcs/article/...
Article: journals.biologists.com/jcs/article/...
#OpenAccess #ReadandPublish

We are excited to share that Nathan Griffin and Petria Thompson will speak at the CTB Department Research In Progress Seminar today! We look forward to seeing you there!

We are excited to share that Arvind Rajan and Karin Shamardani will speak at the CTB Department Research In Progress Seminar today! We look forward to seeing you there!

Pleased to have our reviewed preprint out now @elife.bsky.social

Outstanding work by Drs. Rachel Nakagawa, Dan Van de Mark, and Andrew Beardsley. Shout out to @genophoria.bsky.social, Mary-Kate Hayward and many others

Press Release Here
elifesciences.org/for-the-pres...

@ucsfcancer.bsky.social

We are excited to share that Annie Kingsland will speak at the CTB Department Research In Progress Seminar tomorrow! We look forward to seeing you there!

Check out outstanding grad student Daphne Superville @dasuperville.bsky.social update of DECIPHER-seq package for NMF analysis of single cell sequencing. She is currently using this approach to analyze breast metastasis-specific gene programs.

Happy graduate student appreciation week to David Sung and Luke Lucido!…also trying to encourage them to join Bluesky

UCSF’s Fred Chang Is Honored with Election to AAAS Cell biologist Fred Chang, MD, PhD, has been named a fellow in the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), a highly esteemed lifetime honor within the scientific community.

We are excited to share that Fred Chang has been elected as a AAAS fellow! @fredchanglab.bsky.social

www.ucsf.edu/news/2025/03/429681/ucsfs-fred-chang-honored-election-aaas

UCSF’s Fred Chang Is Honored with Election to AAAS Cell biologist Fred Chang, MD, PhD, has been named a fellow in the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), a highly esteemed lifetime honor within the scientific community.

I'm thrilled to share that CTB faculty Fred Chang has been elected as a AAAS fellow! Congratulations to Fred on this well-deserved honor. @fredchanglab.bsky.social @ctbatucsf.bsky.social

www.ucsf.edu/news/2025/03/429681/ucsfs-fred-chang-honored-election-aaas

Congratulations to Camilla Teng, for winning the "Platform presentation SDB prize" for post-docs at the Northwest SDB meeting, which sounds like it was a fantastic meeting! Camilla will be on the faculty job market soon, so look out for her! @socdevbio.bsky.social @ctbatucsf.bsky.social

Comparison of Research Spending on New Drug Approvals by the NIH vs the Pharmaceutical Industry This cross-sectional study examines National Institutes of Health and pharmaceutical industry investments in recent drug approvals.

As noted by @beckettws.bsky.social

"The FDA approved 356 drugs from 2010 to 2019... Overall, this analysis identified NIH-funded research associated with 354 of 356 products (99.4%) approved from 2010 to 2019. The products without NIH funding were a chelating agent and osmotic laxative." 🧪

Looking forward to the UCSF Breast Oncology Program Retreat tomorrow, including our Session 4 on Tumor Metabolism. Amazing speakers including: Scott Dixon, Kristy Brown, Kai Trepeka, Vivian Lee and Jennifer Rosenbluth
@ucsfcancer.bsky.social @ctbatucsf.bsky.social

Dr. Jeremy Williams presents his thesis studies on lipid metabolism in breast cancer.

Cool story on how TNBC cells and adipocytes are coupled via gap junctions to induce local lipolysis. We propose breast cancers 'steal' lipids for increased FAO and growth.
#metabolism

@ucsfcancer.bsky.social