Prototype Issue
LA Brain Trust: On the Verge in the Vortex
By Elissa Kerhulas
(page 1 of 1)LA spawns genius? Local Scientists crack codes to medical breakthroughs.
Medical and bio-med research in LA County doesn’t get the press the entertainment industry does, but it is a major force here, with its own stars (and star system) and has been since the 1930s, when LA-based bacteriologist Dr. John Kessel undertook research that eventually contributed to the development of the polio vaccine. UCLA and USC are in the forefront of some striking inquiries. Some of the latest breakthroughs you may find crucial and even lifesaving if, Dios forbid, you can smell El Muerte.
Cancer
Linda Liau, M.D., Ph.D., who has lived in LA since she was 5, is an associate professor and co-director of the UCLA Malignant Brain Tumor Program at the UCLA Division of Neurosurgery and the Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center. She is now treating advanced brain cancer patients with a vaccine she helped research that stimulates the brain’s immune system to attack glioblastomas, the most deadly type of cancerous brain tumor. The vaccine itself is derived from immune cells.
“Immune-based therapies for brain tumors are very appealing,” said Liau, “because of their outstanding ability to target and attack cancer cells while avoiding normal brain tissue.” This brain cancer vaccine, now called DCVax-Brain, is currently being tested in Phase II multicenter clinical trials throughout the country.
A few corridors down at UCLA, Arie Belldegrun, is dissolving small kidney tumors by freezing them with liquid nitrogen or heating their mass with radio frequency waves. Belldegrun finds the freezing method, called cryotherapy, which he helped develop, far superior to pharmaceutical treatment of tumors.
For prostate cancer, Robert Reiter, M.D., co-director of UCLA’s Prostate Cancer Program, tailors treatment to each person, using medications developed elsewhere to shrink an enlarged prostate or to relax the prostate muscle to relieve most patients’ symptoms.
For more serious conditions, there is a minimally invasive surgical procedure using a Greenlight Laser, which Dr. Reiter and his staff developed and which he says is especially appealing in that it opens the urinary channel and provides instant relief. Doctors who plug into these developments can treat prostate and kidney cancers sans conventional surgery and its associated risks.
Heart Disease
Meanwhile, the numero uno cause of death is begetting some great advances in treatment. Uri Elkayam, M.D., another prof at USC’s Keck School of Medicine, serves as director of the Heart Failure Program and principle investigator of a study combining two heart medications: hydralazine and isosorbide dinitrate.
Normally prescribed separately, these meds taken together were proven to dramatically reduce death and slow disease progression in blacks, who have a disproportionately high rate of heart failure. The combo reduced the death rate by 43% in study patients the first year. As of February 2007, the American Heart Association and the Heart Failure Society of America is including this treatment in their official guidelines.
Alzheimer’s
A USC research team led by senior investigator Christian Pike, PhD., a Southern California native, has found a link between testosterone decline and Alzheimer’s Disease. A recent study that was published in The Journal of Neuroscience used transgenic mice and confirmed that testosterone depletion in aging men accelerates the development of Alzheimer’s and that testosterone replacement prevents the disease’s acceleration.
A few clinical investigations of testosterone therapy in men with Alzheimer’s have yielded encouraging though mixed results. “As I see it, the problem is that if low testosterone is a risk factor for Alzheimer’s, then testosterone replacement therapy would be most effective for prevention rather than treatment of the disease,” said Pike, adding that it may be some time before there’s a definitive answer.
Meanwhile, a UCLA-Veterans Affairs study involving mice, reported in the Journal of Biological Chemistry found that the yellow pigment in the spice curcumin has powerful antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties that block and break up existing plaques in the brains of Alzheimer’s patients. Some studies out of India, where the spice cumin is a common ingredient in curries, have found a far lower incidence of Alzheimer’s than in the U.S. and other countries.
Incontinence
"A UCLA study found that in mice the yellow pigment in the spice curcumin has powerful antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties that block and break up plaques in the brains of Alzheimer’s patients."
An estimated 13 million people suffer from incontinence, or loss of bladder control, that many assume comes with age. Now some nonsurgical treatments are enjoying a high success rate. At UCLA, one of the few Latinas in academic urology, Larissa Rodriguez, M.D., places a synthetic sling under the urethra, which constricts the urinary channel.
After a two-year follow up study, 83% of test patients reported no more urinary leakage. Separately, a new UCLA study involving stem cells is showing great promise in rebuilding damaged urethras and restoring them as smoothly functioning muscles, relieving the condition.
Mind, Body and Lots of Heart
While research docs still focus primarily on disease cures, booming throughout the medical arts is the “integrative medicine” approach that redefines health as holistic well-being in mind, body and spirit, not merely as the absence of disease. This is the focus of the UCLA Center for East-West Medicine.
Since 1993 it has been a model of inexpensive health promotion, disease prevention, treatment and rehabilitation via East-West medicine and complementary therapies that include acupuncture, acupressure, massage, herbal medicine and nutrition.
“All forms of medicine aim to ease human suffering and prolong life,” said director Ka-Kit Hui, M.D., FACP, and holder of the Wallis Annenberg Endowed Chair in Integrative East-West Medicine. “They differ only in their approaches to the realization of this goal.” Through education, qi-gong and tai chi among other non-Western practices, patients learn to heal themselves in a supportive community setting.
Elsewhere, the staff at USC/Norris Cancer Hospital has discovered that an English-style tea time can be an important, stress relieving part of treatment. Patients, friends and families enjoy a weekly ritual of gathering in the visiting rooms for a formal tea, complete with tables adorned with fine linens, china, flowers and teapots. The practice, which has been going strong for the past four years, may not change the course of a disease but has proven a welcome respite from anxiety.
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