Reaching Across the Causeway Awardees

Damian Genetos, professor of anatomy, physiology, and cell biology in the UC Davis Weill School of Veterinary Medicine, for the project, "Bone-mimetic Engineered Niches as Selective Traps for Early Capture and Molecular Profiling of Skeletal Metastasis," the goal of which is to develop bone-like implants that can capture and identify the cancer cells most likely to spread to bone.

Angela Gomez-Simmonds, assistant professor of infectious diseases in the School of Medicine, for the study, "Assessing Clostridioides difficile Colonization Resistance and Antimicrobial Resistance Genes Across Patient Samples." The team will study how healthy gut bacteria protect against C. difficile and antibiotic-resistant infections.

Qizhi Gong, professor of cell biology and human anatomy in the School of Medicine, for "Regulation of Barrier Integrity at the Nose-Brain Interface," which will study a vulnerable gateway where smell-related nerves connect the nose to the brain to understand how infections and inflammation may affect the brain's natural defenses.

Alessandro Venosa, associate professor of molecular biosciences in the UC Davis Weill School of Veterinary Medicine, for the project, "Obesity as a Modifier of Environmental Lung Injury," which focuses on bile acid signaling pathways that may contribute to inflammation following exposure to air pollution.

Yin Allison Liu, associate professor of ophthalmology & vision science in the School of Medicine, for the project, "Bioelectric Modulation of Microglia to Promote Recovery After Acute Ischemic Optic Neuropathy," which will utilize electrical stimulation, advanced imaging and neuroimmunology to investigate whether bioelectric signals can direct immune cells toward a reparative state and improve recovery after optic nerve injury. This project is supported by funding from the CTSC.

Adrien Dupanloup, assistant professor of neurology and neurosurgery in the UC Davis Weill School of Veterinary Medicine for the project "Defining the Cross-Species Immune Landscape of Pituitary Tumors to Enable Immunotherapeutic Strategies," which will examine how the immune system interacts with pituitary tumors in dogs and humans. This project is supported by funding from the UC Davis Comprehensive Cancer Center.