Newsletter
Summer 2022

Summer TPP Creation

This summer, the Catalyst Program recruited 80 interns from UCSF, San Francisco State University, UC Berkeley, UC Hastings, the City College of San Francisco, and beyond to help the 2022 Kunal Patel Catalyst Award Project Teams create their Target Product Profiles (“TPP”) to help advance this year's Catalyst Award projects along the translational pathway to product development and patient benefit.

Last month, the Catalyst Program facilitated a workshop with the program's expert industry advisors for the Catalyst Award Project Teams and Catalyst Interns focused on the development of a TPP. The workshop topics included the role of the TPP in translational studies, how to create a TPP, and the importance of Intellectual Property. Workshops later this summer will focus on Project Management, the importance of the TPP for product development and commercialization, as well as a primer on the entrepreneurship resources in the life sciences at UCSF. Special thanks to Catalyst Advisors Geetha Rao, Erica Pascal, and Ken Fang for sharing their TPP expertise with the Project Teams in the workshops!

The Project Teams will present their TPP this Fall to expert industry advisors for additional feedback.

Explore the full list of Catalyst Awardees and learn more about

Catalyst Awardees Publish Exciting Studies
Awardees Ian Seiple and James Wells recently published an article in ACS Chemical Biology titled "Roadmap for Optimizing and Broadening Antibody-Based PROTACs for Degradation of Cell Surface Proteins." Learn more

Awardees Kaitlin Hulce, Charly Craik, Adam Renslo, and Michele Arkin, published their study titled "Inhibiting a Dynamic Viral Protease by Targeting a Non-catalytic Cysteine" in Cell Chemical Biology. Learn more

Catalyst Intern Barbara Gonzalez-Teran published her "Transcription Factor Protein Interactomes Reveal Genetic Determinants in Heart Disease" study in Cell. Learn more

Congratulations to all involved on these exciting scientific publications!


Catalyst Awardee to lead PROMINENT Team
Current Awardee Luke Gilbert, PhD, will co-lead a team of researchers that were awarded a $25 million Cancer Grand Challenges award to investigate the very early stages of cancer development. Known as "PROMINENT" (PROMotion to INform prevENTion), this team will seek answers to fundamental questions about the very early stages of tumor development.

UCSF's Living Therapeutic Initiative
This year, the Catalyst Program and the Living Therapies Initiative (LTI) launched an inaugural collaboration that resulted in LTI funding one of the 2022 Kunal Patel Catalyst Awards with $100,000. The project is titled "Universal Stem Cell-based Delivery of Tumor-Selective Retroviral Replicating Vectors" and led by Noriyuki Kasahara, MD, PhD.


Catalyst Awardee John Chorba Awarded NIH RO1 Grant
John Chorba, MD, Principal Investigator of the Catalyst Project titled "Targeting the Serine Protease PCSK9 via Covalent Complementarity" was recently awarded an NIH RO1 grant for Chemical Biology to modulate PCSK9 and treat atherosclerosis. The $1.81 total award funding will last for five years and includes $1.12 M in direct project funding costs.

Alessa Therapeutics Announces First Patient Enrollment in Collaboration with the National Cancer Center
Alessa Therapeutics, Inc., led by Pamela Munster, MD, is a clinical-stage drug development company developing an innovative and proprietary localized drug delivery technology to treat prostate disease. Recently, Alessa Therapeutics announced the enrollment of the first two men with prostate cancer in the company’s Biolen+RT clinical study.

Akili Interactive Publishes Clinical Study Results
Alkili Interactive, a leading digital medicine company pioneering the development of cognitive treatments through game-changing technologies based on research by Catalyst Awardee Adam Gazzaley, MD, PhD, has recently published their clinical study results and EEG data that show how their product activates systems in the brain key to attentional functioning in children with ADHD.

Altschuler and Wu Labs in the News
Catalyst Project research from Steve Altschuler, PhD, and Lani Wu, PhD, was recently published in Science Advances as a study titled “Modulating Environmental Signals to Reveal Mechanisms and Vulnerabilities of Cancer Persisters.”

Additionally, the team's efforts to develop the persister target discovery platform is now supported by the Mark Foundation via a recently secured ASPIRE Award (Accelerating Scientific Platforms and Innovative Research).


Entrepreneurship Course Offerings
Interested in advancing your knowledge in biotech and life sciences entrepreneurship? The courses below may be exactly what you're looking for!



In case you missed it...
2022 Rare Disease Symposium
The UCSF Catalyst Program and Foundation Ipsen hosted an Interdisciplinary Virtual Rare Disease Symposium on April 20, 2022 titled "Innovations in
Diagnostics and Therapeutics." Thanks to all who participated in the Rare Disease Symposium!

For those of you who could not attend, or had to step away in the middle,
we recorded the whole event and you can catch up on the latest innovations
in diagnostics and therapeutics for rare diseases.

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