JANUARY 2025 NEWS

Dear Friends,

We are inspired to declare 2025 Salk’s “Year of Alzheimer's Disease”—a dedicated effort to highlight this devastating condition and the transformative work of our scientists to understand its underlying causes and means of progression. For too long, Alzheimer’s research has been too narrowly focused on the buildup of two proteins associated with the disease, which become deleterious only late in the disease.

Salk scientists are now expanding the scope of inquiry, exploring inflammation and other processes that occur early in disease development. They are looking at all brain cell types, not just neurons, and doing it across the life span. They are developing innovative tools to model the disease, simulate metabolic and immunological stresses, and capture real-time cell images of corresponding cellular responses. These new approaches may hold the key to earlier Alzheimer’s detection and more effective therapeutic interventions.

We hope you will join us in this critical endeavor. Please stay tuned throughout the year for updates, new discoveries, and opportunities to support our mission to improve lives through science.

With warm regards,

Gerald Joyce

Salk Institute President

MORE DISCOVERIES

Boosting this molecule could help retain muscle while losing fat

About one in eight adults in the United States has tried or currently uses a GLP-1 medication, and a quarter of those users cite weight loss as their main goal. But “weight loss” doesn’t discriminate between fat and muscle. Patients using GLP-1 drugs can experience rapid and substantial muscle loss, accounting for as much as 40% of their total weight loss. So how can we lose weight without also losing critical muscle? Professor Ronald Evans answers this question in a Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences study.

Bile acids exacerbate liver cancer, dietary supplement may offer relief

Immunotherapy has made an incredible impact on treating cancers in many different organ systems, including the lung, kidney, and bladder—but for other cancers, such as liver cancer, the therapy has been much less effective. To understand why, Professor Susan Kaech and team took a closer look at how the immune system and liver interact. They found that certain bile acids in the liver could affect the activity of cancer-fighting immune cells. Excitingly, they also saw that boosting the levels of one bile acid, ursodeoxycholic acid (UDCA), through dietary supplementation was enough to control tumor growth in mice with liver cancer. The findings were published in Science.

Putting a lid on excess cholesterol to halt bladder cancer cell growth

Professor Tony Hunter discovered that a protein called PIN1—first identified in his lab in 1996—drives bladder cancer by triggering the synthesis of cholesterol, which cancer then uses as fuel to grow. The researchers developed an effective treatment regimen that largely halted tumor growth in their mouse model of cancer: a PIN1 inhibitor called sulfopin, an experimental drug not yet tested in humans, and simvastatin, a statin that is already used in humans for lowering cholesterol levels. The study was published in Cancer Discovery.

Two-in-one root armor protects plants from environmental stressors and fights climate change

Plants may burrow into the ground and stretch toward the sun, but they’re ultimately stuck where they sprout—at the mercy of environmental threats like temperature, drought, and infection. To compensate for their inability to up and move when danger strikes, many plants have evolved ways to protect themselves by altering their physiology, such as building armor around parts of their bodies and roots, called the periderm. In Developmental Cell, Professor Wolfgang Busch and team debuted the first comprehensive gene expression atlas of the plant periderm at the single-cell level.

See also:

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Plant cells gain immune capabilities when it’s time to fight disease

Human bodies defend themselves using immune cells that circulate from one organ to another, responding to everything from cuts to colds to cancer. But plants don’t have this luxury. Because plant cells are immobile, each individual cell is forced to manage its own immunity in addition to its many other responsibilities. How these multitasking cells accomplish it all—detecting threats, communicating those threats, and responding effectively—has remained unclear. Professor Joseph Ecker and team identified a new rare immune cell state in plants in their recent Nature study.

MEET A SALK SCIENTIST

In our monthly video series “From Then to When,” we bring you the unique stories of Salk researchers, from their personal journeys into science to their motivations and goals for the future.

Growing up in Sweden meant spending a lot of time in the woods, where Kosuri learned to build his own toys and whittle wood. With maturity came a growing interest in reading and philosophy—hobbies that paired well with his childlike excitement for construction and discovery. “I think I’ve always gravitated toward unknown situations, and I’ve really enjoyed having to figure out, where do I go from here?” he says.

Now, Assistant Professor Kosuri is a bioengineer studying the movement and organization of molecules in tissues using custom nanoscale devices he develops in his lab. Learn more about Kosuri’s work and journey to Salk in this episode of “From Then to When.”

Salk Institute welcomes technology leader Fred Luddy to Board of Trustees

Luddy founded ServiceNow, a leading intelligent platform driving end-to-end digital transformation. Under his leadership, ServiceNow became the fastest-growing enterprise software company to achieve more than $10 billion in annual revenue organically. Today, Luddy continues to innovate as a technology visionary, focusing on projects to revolutionize spreadsheets and improve the diagnosis and treatment of rare genetic diseases in children.

Read more »

Salk Institute names plant geneticist Detlef Weigel as Nonresident Fellow

As a Nonresident Fellow, Weigel joins a group of eminent scientific advisors who guide the Institute’s leadership. Weigel is a director and scientific member at the Max Planck Institute for Biology Tübingen in Germany and an adjunct professor at the Salk Institute and University of Tübingen. He uses genomic techniques to study developmental and evolutionary plant biology.

Read more »

INSIDE SALK

Salk's award-winning magazine | Winter edition

Marking the end of our “Year of Healthy Aging,” the winter 2024 edition of Inside Salk shines a light on neuroimmunology—an exciting cross-disciplinary field that pairs immune and nervous systems to ask questions about human health and disease. Beyond a feature on this emerging research area, we chat with Salk Fellow Talmo Pereira about his AI-based motion-tracking technology, Harnessing Plants Initiative’s program manager Kay Watt about mitigating climate change, and postdoctoral researcher Pau Esparza-Moltó about mitochondria’s role in healthy aging. Visit the issue online now and join our mailing list to have Inside Salk delivered right to your door.

EVENTS

Tony Hunter at the Salk Institute—50 Years of Rafting the River of Life: February 21

You’re invited to honor and celebrate Professor Tony Hunter by joining us for an engaging and inspiring day of science and camaraderie. Hunter has dedicated 50 years to cancer research at the Salk Institute—an extraordinary career that has led to targeted cancer therapies, saved countless lives, and forever changed how we view human biology.

Learn more and RSVP at: www.salk.edu/tony-hunter-celebration

Save the Date for the 29th Annual Symphony at Salk: Saturday, August 16

Symphony at Salk is a treasured tradition where guests enjoy a champagne reception, a gourmet dinner in Salk’s iconic courtyard, and the incredible sounds of the San Diego Symphony and a special guest artist. Past artists have included such stars as Jennifer Hudson, Josh Groban, Idina Menzel, and Liza Minnelli. More details are forthcoming. Find the latest information at: symphony.salk.edu

Monthly Wallpaper

This month, researchers in Professor Ronald Evans’ lab looked at the cellular mechanisms that influence how our muscles grow and shrink.

Below are mouse muscle cells, outlined in red, and their DNA-containing nuclei, visible as blue dots.

Credit: Salk Institute

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