Director's Message

Dr. John Penhune, Senior Vice President of Research at Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), has served with distinction as Chair of the Industrial Advisory Board of WIBE. He will spend a good part of his time in Hawaii beginning this summer. Therefore, the Board will elect a new Chair at its coming meeting on May 23. We owe a great deal to John for his outstanding leadership. His tremendous contributions to the Institute are greatly appreciated.

Dean Robert W. Conn, in his tenure as Dean of Jacobs School of Engineering, has provided outstanding leadership for the School and for bioengineering. We wish to express our sincere gratitude for his strong support and encouragement and our warmest wishes for all his successes in his new ventures. We welcome Dr. Frieder Seible, a world-renowned expert in earthquake research, to be the Acting Dean effective July 2002.

I am very pleased that the industrial profile in this newsletter features our long-standing Industrial Affiliates Program member Alliance Pharmaceutical Corporation. Dr. Michelle Mazzoni, Senior Director of Biological Research at Alliance and a member of our Industrial Advisory Board, received her Ph.D. degree from UCSD Bioengineering.

The 2002 Bioengineering Graduate Symposium held on March 9 was a great success. The Bioengineering faculty and students and our industrial colleagues used this opportunity to gather together in fruitful and collegial interactions.

The Third UC System-wide Bioengineering Symposium was organized by UC Berkeley and held at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory on May 5 and 6. The Symposium was a great success. We look forward to hosting the Fourth Symposium at UCSD.

I would like to thank Tatyana Matusov of WIBE for writing the article about me as a Whitaker Institute faculty member. I am greatly honored to be appointed a University Professor and chosen as the 13th recipient of the Poiseuille Gold Medal.

We sincerely congratulate our faculty, research staff and students for their awards and honors received during the past quarter. Also we congratulate our
new graduates for completing their education at UCSD Bioengineering.

Dr. Shu Chien, Director

WIBE Industrial Affiliate: Alliance Pharmaceutical Corporation

Microscopic bubbles for imaging the heart. A synthetic oxygen carrier to reduce the need for donor blood. Alliance Pharmaceutical Corp., a San Diego-based research and development company, is using its novel core technologies to develop these and other unique diagnostic and therapeutic products. Alliance's expertise with perfluorochemicals (PFCs), surfactants, emulsion manufacturing, and spray-dry processing is the basis of related, but independent, products intended to address significant medical needs.

Imavist™ (perfluorohexane microspheres) is a contrast agent awaiting final US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval for use in conjunction with ultrasound imaging. It is packaged as a powder that is reconstituted with water to form highly reflective "microbubbles" containing a PFC vapor. The microbubbles are designed to be administered intravenously and to travel in the bloodstream. Imavist has received an "approvable" status from the FDA as a new agent to enhance ultrasound visualization of the endocardial border (walls) heart and assist in the diagnosis of heart disease. It will be marketed by Alliance in partnership with Cardinal Health, Inc.

Imavist was invented at Alliance, and is an example of the creativity of the company's scientists. The microbubbles were engineered to be osmotically stable within the bloodstream so that they will neither grow to large and potentially unsafe sizes, nor shrink too rapidly to provide an adequate imaging window. In order to overcome the difficulties of transporting fragile bubbles, they are spray-dried using a proprietary technique to form a powder of microscopic particles that can withstand the rigors of shipping and extended storage.

Alliance has also used its particle/powder engineering technology to formulate microscopic spheres that contain an encased drug. These PulmoSpheres® and MediSpheres™ may be useful for delivery of drugs to the lungs via metered-dose inhalers, dry powder inhalers, nebulizers, or in conjunction with LiquiVent®, a neat liquid PFC (perflubron). LiquiVent spreads easily throughout the lungs, and may be beneficial in distributing dissolved and suspended drugs through the airways. Unlike aqueous liquids, LiquiVent has a high solubility for oxygen and carbon dioxide and may therefore facilitate pulmonary gas exchange.

Alliance has used its perflubron technology to formulate Oxygent™, an intravenous oxygen carrier or "blood substitute" is in late-stage clinical development. Oxygent is being developed for the treatment of surgical and other acute care patients in conjunction with Baxter Healthcare Corporation. The product is a sterile perflubron-based emulsion produced using a simple, efficient, high-yield and cost-effective process patented by Alliance. National blood shortages and ongoing safety concerns regarding donor blood underscore the need for a product that could reduce the need for blood in surgical and emergency situations. Oxygent is formulated from a synthetic raw material and does not contain any human or animal blood components.

Alliance is proud of the accomplishments of its scientists, and encourages cooperation with academic programs. The company has had an ongoing relationship with the Biomedical Engineering program at UCSD, and has supported students in paid internships and in the Masters program. Alliance has also worked on collaborative studies with several UCSD faculty members. The company hopes to continue its partnership with the university as it explores new products and technologies.

For more information about Alliance Pharmaceutical Corp., please visit www.allp.com.

2002 Bioengineering Graduate Symposium

The 2002 Bioengineering Graduate Symposium was a tremendous success. High quality presentations were given for each of the lab groups, giving students a chance to present work from their lab, as well as giving the prospective students a chance to learn about the opportunities that exist at UCSD. The symposium also provided an opportunity for the whole department to come together and interact. Students presented over thirty posters, with Jared Allen receiving the award for best student poster for his work on liver zonation using oxygen gradients. Iman Famili was a runner-up for her work on reconstructing the yeast metabolic network along with Robert Mills for his studies on the effects of myocardial stretch on the action potential.

Third UC System-wide Bioengineering Symposium

Following the first two successful UC System-wide Bioengineering Symposia held at UC Davis in 2000 and UC Santa Barbara in 2001, The Third UC System-wide Bioengineering Symposium was organized by UC Berkeley and held at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory on May 5 and 6. Under the leadership of Dr. Thomas Budinger and with the excellent work of the organizing committee, the Symposium was a great success. More than 200 faculty, students, and industrial scientists attended the symposium. There were 25 oral presentations and 36 poster presentations, mainly by graduate students of the nine UC campuses. It fully accomplished the goal uniting the nine campuses for learning and growing together. The Fourth UC System-wide Bioengineering Symposium will be held at UCSD in late June 2003 and the Fifth one at UC Irvine.

UCSD Gene Therapy

A new gene therapy was developed by the bioengineers at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) Jacobs School of Engineering. The University has recently been issued US Patent # 6,335,010 for the invention of the new therapy to prevent restenosis following angioplasty. The experimental gene therapy reduced the formation of clogged arteries by more than one-half in large animal models.

Atherosclerosis in coronary arteries can lead to heart attack, and angioplasty is a common treatment to remove this dangerous artery-clogging plaque. However, one-third of all patients who receive balloon angioplasty experience a recurrence of the clogging, a condition known as restenosis, within weeks or months following treatment.

The new gene therapy technique uses RasN17, a negative mutant of RAS that blocks the signaling pathway. The animal studies have shown that by introducing RasN17 during the angioplasty procedure, the gene therapy can prevent restenosis.

The therapy has been tested in pigs because the porcine cardiovascular system is similar to that of humans. Those pigs which received RasN17 had 56 percent less artery wall thickening than pigs which received a placebo gene therapy. Results of these experiments, which were conducted in collaboration with the China Medical College and Pig Research Institute in Taiwan, were reported in the May 2001 issue of the Journal of Surgical Research.

UCSD is currently negotiating the license of the technology to a company that would continue to develop the therapy in preparation for clinical trials.

Announcements

The Third UC System-wide Bioengineering Symposium, which included all nine campuses of the University of California, was held at Berkeley on May 5-6 (Sunday-Monday). Information about the symposium is available at: http://www-bioeng.berkeley.edu/Symposium2002/. The Steering Committee met on May 6 and decided that the next System-wide Symposium will be held at UCSD in June 2003 and that the 2004 Symposium will take place at UC Irvine.

Dean Robert Conn has made a decision to step down as Dean of the Irwin and Joan Jacobs School of Engineering on July 1, 2002. He will join Enterprise Partners Venture Capital as a managing director. The University has granted Dr. Conn a two-year leave of absence beginning at the same time.

Since 1994, under Dean Conn's leadership, the Jacobs School has risen to the ranks of the top ten public engineering schools in the nation. During Dr. Conn service as Dean, the School has experienced unprecedented period of growth marked by a sixty-five percent increase in faculty and graduate students, and a thirty-five percent growth in undergraduates. Dean Conn's leadership lead to a doubling of average annual private funding for the Jacobs School. Dean Conn chaired an advisory council to President Atkinson that resulted in increased engineering funding and enrollments throughout the UC system. Dean Conn has provided strong support in fostering the growth and development of biomedical engineering at UCSD. The University has begun a national search for the next dean for the Jacobs School of Engineering.

Dr. Frieder Seible, Executive Associate Dean of the Jacobs School of Engineering and Professor of Structural Engineering, has agreed to serve as Acting Dean of the Jacobs School effective July 1, 2002.

The BioEntrepreneur Symposium was held on Saturday, May 11 on UCSD campus. The symposium explored the corporate, financial and university roles in new company formation, and offered practical advice to inventor-scientists. Speakers included veteran biotechnology executives, venture capitalists, intellectual property attorneys, business development executives, and university licensing officers. The web site with the full symposium agenda and speaker BIOS can be found at www.bioentrepreneur.ucsd.edu/.

The US News & World Report rankings of the nation's best engineering schools and graduate programs are out. Our Bioengineering program is ranked 3rd in the nation.

The Spring meeting of the WIBE Industrial Advisory Board will be held on May 23 at 7:30 am in room 232 of the Science and Engineering Research Facility Building. After his distinguished service since 1995, Dr. Penhune will retire from the position of Chair of the Board. A new chair of the Board will be elected.

WIBE Member: Shu Chien

University Professor of Bioengineering and Medicine, Director, Whitaker Institute of Biomedical Engineering. Professor Chien joined UCSD in 1988 and became the founding chair of the Department of Bioengineering at the Jacobs School of Engineering in 1994. As principal investigator on the Whitaker Foundation Development Award (1993) and Leadership Award (1998), Professor Chien played a major role in establishing the UCSD bioengineering program as one of the top programs in the country. Professor Chien's research focuses on cardiovascular bioengineering, especially on understanding how cells respond to mechanical forces in health and disease.

He has elucidated the molecular mechanisms by which blood flow forces alter gene expression in the endothelial cells that make up the inner lining of blood vessels and has identified the chain of events that transmit molecular signals from the cell membrane to activate genes in the nucleus. His work has uncovered new details about how low density lipoproteins (LDL) accumulate in the arteries. UCSD has also just received a US patent on his invention of a gene therapy approach to prevent the re-occlusion of coronary arteries after balloon angioplasty.

Professor Chien received his MD from the National Taiwan University and his Ph.D. in Physiology from Columbia University, where he was a professor from 1969 to 1988. He is one of the few scientists in the nation to be elected a member of both the National Academy of Engineering and the Institute of Medicine. Dr. Chien is chairman of advisory committees of the Institute of Biomedical Sciences of Academia Sinica and the National Health Research Institutes in Taiwan and members of many advisory committees of leading biomedical engineering programs in the United States. He chairs the Steering Committee for the formation of a UC System-wide Multi-campus Research Unit on Biomedical Engineering. He has served as president of the Microcirculatory Society, American Chinese Medical Society, American Physiological Society, Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology, and American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering.

Just a few of Dr. Chien's numerous honors and awards include the Microcirculatory Society's Landis Award, the World Congress of Microcirculation's Zweifach Award, the Biomedical Engineering Society's ALZA Award, the American Physiological Society's Ray Daggs Award, the National Institutes of Health Merit Award, and the 1990 and 1996 Melville Medals from the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) for best scientific papers of these years. He has been selected to receive the Poiseuille Gold Medal at the International Congress of Biorheology to be held in Antalya, Turkey in September 2002.

Professor Chien has been recently awarded the title of University Professor by the Board of Regents and President Atkinson. This new appointment means that Dr. Chien will visit and lecture at other campuses to work with students and faculty throughout the UC system. A celebratory reception in honor of Dr. Shu Chien's appointment to University Professor was held in the Faculty Club on March 28.

Professor Chien's effort as the founder of the Department of Bioengineering and the founder and director of the Whitaker Institute of Biomedical Engineering, was one of the reasons that the bioengineering program at UCSD has developed to the state when it is ranked consistently among the top three in the nation.

Bioengineering Seminar Schedule

Spring Quarter 2002
Room 2111 Warren Lecture Hall
2:30 - 3:30 P.M. Fridays
BE 281 and The Whitaker Institute of Biomedical Engineering

WIBE Faculty Honors

Dr. Peter Wagner was selected by the American Physiological Society to deliver the Edward Adolph Distinguished Lecture at the Experimental Biology 2002 meeting in New Orleans. He was also elected to presidential ladder of the American Thoracic Society, 2002 (Secretary/Treasurer 2002, Vice President 2003, President elect 2004 and President in 2005). Dr. Wagner also received a UCSD Academic Senate Distinguished teaching award, 2002 and was appointed Interim Division Chief of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine at UCSD, 2002 while still serving as regular Division Chief of Physiology.

Dr. John B. West, was selected by the American Physiological Society to receive the Arthur C. Guyton Teaching Award at the Experimental Biology 2002 meeting in New Orleans.

Dr. Allen Ryan , was invited to participate in a Nobel Symposium entitled "To heal hearing" in Stockholm this June. Dr. Ryan will be presenting his data on inner ear sensory cell protection and transplantation.

Shu Chien has been chosen as the 13th recipient of the Poiseuille Gold Medal, the highest honor in Biorheology, and deliver the Poiseuille Lecture at the 11th International Congress of Biorheology in Antalya, Turkey, in September. The Jacobs School of Engineering announcement stated that this is yet another extraordinary recognition of Prof. Chien's remarkable career of achievements. We are fortunate to have had outstanding leaders in this field. With Professor Y.C. Fung and the late Professor Richard Skalak, who were earlier winners of this prestigious honor, UCSD Bioengineering has three of the 13 awardees.

Dr. Richard Lieber and Dr. Jan Fridén (Department of Hand Surgery, Sahlgrenska University Hospital, Göteborg, Sweden) recently won the 2002 "Nicolas Andry" award from the American Bone and Joint Surgeons for their work entitled, Skeletal Muscle Design and Function: implications for Upper Extremity Surgical Reconstruction. Drs. Lieber and Friden will go to Vancouver in May to receive the plaque along with a $15,000 award.

Dr. Schmid-Schönbein was elected President-elect of the US Microcirculatory Society. He will serve as President in the year 2003-2004. The MCS is a Society that promotes research in transport in living tissues, microvessels and lymphatics.

Dr. Nick Spitzer was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, along with four other UCSD faculty colleagues.

Dr. Roger Y. Tsien received the following awards and honors: Award for Creative Invention from the American Chemical Society; Anfinsen Award from the Protein Society; Dr. H.P. Heineken Prize for Biochemistry and Biophysics 2002, and election to Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Dr. Roland Blantz was elected President of the American Society of Nephrology, which represents approximately 12,000 US and international members and holds annual meetings with a usual attendance of 13,000, and President of the Council of American Kidney Societies.

Dr. Sangeeta Bhatia received the NSF CAREER Award for her research on Microscale Structure/Function Studies Towards Development of Engineered Liver Tissue.

Dr. Bernhard Palsson was the winner of the Lindbergh-Carrel prize as an inventor of hollow fiber perfused bioreactor technology for propagation of stem cells and a pioneer of the mathematical modeling of circuit systems and In Silico Biology.

Researchers' Honors

Dr. Peter Yingxiao Wang has received a Caroline tum Suden - Frances Hellebrandt Professional Opportunity Award from The American Physiological Society at the Experimental Biology 2002 meeting in New Orleans.

Student Honors

Jared Allen - Best Poster, Bioengineering Graduate Student Symposium 2002

Vicki Chin - Best Bioengineering Poster, Jacobs School of Engineering Research Review; Graduate Research Award, Jacobs School of Engineering 2002

Benjamin Wong, a Warren College junior majoring in Bioengineering, has been selected as one of three UCSD undergraduate students to receive a scholarship from the Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship and Excellence in Education Foundation for the 2002-2003 academic year. Goldwater scholars are selected on the basis of academic merit and nominations made by university faculty nationwide. Recipients are awarded up to $7,500 to cover tuition, fees, books, and room and board The Goldwater Foundation is a federally endowed agency that offers scholarships in honor of Sen. Barry M. Goldwater to students of mathematics, the natural sciences and engineering.

Won Bae, MS, received a doctoral dissertation fellowship from the Arthritis Foundation (San Diego Chapter).

The following seven Spring 2002 graduate students will be receiving Departmental Awards for Highest Academic Achievement:

Student	Major	College
David Lee Drake	Bioengineering	Revelle
Scott Anthony Becker	Bioengineering	Revelle
Christopher William Benner	Bioengineering	Warren
Michael Carl Chen	Bioengineering: Premedical	Warren
Aaron Sheng-Chieh Wang	Bioengineering: Premedical	Revelle
Joe Lee	Bioengineering: Premedical	Warren
Amanda Courtney Reiswig	Bioengineering: Biotechnology	Warren

New Bioengineering Ph.D.'s and Their Current Positions

Keith Herrmann, Senior Scientist - Guidant Corporation, Cardiac Rhythm Management, St. Paul, MN
Peter Yingxiao Wang, Postdoctoral Fellow - Department of Bioengineering
Sameer Shah, Postdoctoral Fellow, UCSD - Department of Neurosciences/Medical School
Susanne Heynen, Career Research Position, Q3DM Inc., San Diego

Congratulations to all!

University of California, San Diego
Whitaker Institute of Biomedical Engineering
9500 Gilman Drive
La Jolla, CA 92093-0427

(858) 822-2290