Detailed description of Winter quarter training programs.
The program’s strategy is to place graduate students within one of thirteen medical groups that conduct the ongoing diagnosis and treatment of various types of human disease related to the graduate students area of thesis research. These medical groups reside within the Departments of Medicine, Neurosciences, and Pediatrics. Each medical group has devised a “Medical Specialty Training Program” (MSP) that offers graduate students 10 to 12 weeks of training approaching full-time (see Table 1, below. Complete description of each program is hyperlinked to the MSP topic title).
Specific training Goals: Each medical specialty program provides students with:
1. A clear delineation of common pathologies that arise from both known and unknown molecular mechanisms.
2. A clear understanding of the primary cause of a disease, as well as its secondary effects and their accompanying biochemical mechanisms.
3. An accurate knowledge of tests used to diagnose disease, and whether these assays are based on changes directly caused by the pathogenesis mechanism,
4. An accurate understanding of current therapeutics used to treat disease, their efficiency, and whether they are molecularly-based,
5. An understanding of the side-effects of current therapies and whether these side-effects can be eliminated by molecular therapeutics,
6. A recognition of therapeutics that are suboptimal, and whether new molecularly-based therapeutics could be developed,
7. An understanding of how molecular discoveries in basic research become effective therapeutics through the process of translational and clinical research.
Broad training goals: By providing a rigorous clinical context to graduate traniing, students will:
1. Be able to use their medical knowledge to focus their future research on the most important issues in human disease.
2. Recognize opportunities to apply their molecular knowledge to improve diagnostics and therapeutics.
3. Learn to interface and collaborate with clinical and translational researchers, fostering translation of future research discoveries into the clinic.
4. Acquire an urgency to cure human disease by being exposed to it first hand.
Benefit to the medical group: By bringing a strong knowledge of molecular biology, mechanisms of pathogenesis, and research techniques into the clinical, students will help educate medical students, residents, and clinicians in molecular mechanisms of pathogenesis and may initiate new avenues of study for the medical group or catalyze new collaborations with UCSD scientists.
Activities sponsored by each Medical Specialty Program
1. Student will attend in house training for medical students and medical residents focused on disease pathophysiology, disease progression, treatment efficiencies of current drugs or biomechanical devices, therapeutic side-effects.
2. Student will join teams of physicians, medical students and residents in outpatient and inpatient settings for patient examination, evaluation, and for discussions of diagnosis and treatment.
3. When applicable, students will view surgeries involved in disease treatment and autopsies of terminal disease patients.
4. Student will attend Pathology Department Clinical Case Conferences that focus in on disease pathology and at autopsy (e.g. neuropathology conference for Alzheimer, autopsy conference for heart, pediatric autopsy for genetics).
5. Student will discuss clinical trials design and results that are ongoing in the various medical divisions hosting the MSP.
6. Student will participate in physician-scientist-mentored Journal Club for presentations by medical students and residents. Attend clinical and translational research seminars by in-house and external experts at “Grand Rounds”.
7. Student will be matched with a physician-scientist mentor who will discuss background information, review medical terminology, and answer questions and review medical activities on a weekly basis. This mentor will become a member of the students thesis committee, and will remain their clinical contact person.
Table 1. Overview of MSP topics and training programs (click topic hyperlink for full program description)
| MSP Topic | Program Director | Student Research Interest | Most Common Diseases | |
| 1 | Infectious Disease |
Joseph M. Vinetz, M.D. Division of Infectious Diseases |
Microbiology, signal transduction, immunology, inflammation | Pneumonia, meningitis, endocarditis sepsis, osteomyelitis, pyelonephritis |
| 2 | Infectious Disease Tropical, Peru |
Joseph M. Vinetz, M.D. Division of Infectious Diseases |
Microbiology, signal transduction, immunology, inflammation | Malaria, leptospirosis, dengue, typhoid, leprosy, brucellosis, tuberculosis, parasitic diarrheal diseases, leishmaniasis |
| 3 | Infectious Disease Virology |
Doug Richman, M.D. Division of Infectious Diseases |
Virology, signal transduction, immunology, inflammation | HIV/AIDS, hepatitis B, hepatitis C, influenza, herpes virus, viral meningitis |
| 4 | Inflammatory, allergic, autoimmune disease | Gary Firestein, M.D. Head, Division of Rheumatology |
Inflammation, immunology, signal transduction | Rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, osteoarthritus, vasculitis psoriatic arthritis, ankylosing spondylitis, gout, scleroderma |
| 5 | Cutaneous Biology | Richard L. Gallo, M.D., Ph.D., Head, Division of Dermatology | Innate immunity, stem cells, autoimmunity, development | Psoriasis, dermatitis, basal cell carcinoma, squamous carcinoma, Melanoma, cellulitis |
| 6 | Cardiovascular diseases | Kirk Knowlton Head, Division of Cardiology |
Cardiovascular biology, signal trans, molecular pharm, development | Coronary artery disease, congestive heart failure, hypertension, valvular heart disease, myocardial infarction, endocarditis |
| 7 | Genetic diseases | Marilyn Jones , M.D., Department of Pediatrics, Division of Genetics |
Genetics, development, biochemistry | Down & Turner syndrome, hemoglobinopathies, hemophilia, storage diseases, hypertension, hyperrlipidemia |
| 8 | Cancer & Blood cell Malignancies | Kenneth Kaushansky, M.D. Chair, Medicine | Cancer, stem cells, signal transduction, structural biology, adhesion, metastasis, angiogenesis, molecular pharmacology | Epithelial Solid Tumors, sarcomas, leukemias, lymphomas, myelodysplastic/myeloproliferative syndromes, hemophilias, platelet abnormalities, leukopenia |
| Lymphoma Center | Thomas Kipps, M.D., Ph.D. | Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia | ||
| 9 | Neurodegenerative Diseases | Edward Koo, M.D. and Doris Trauner, M.D., Department of Neurosciences |
Signal transduction, apoptosis, biochemistry, development, aging, molecular pharmacology | Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, and Huntington's diseases and related neurodegenerative disorders |
| 10 | CNS injury and disease, Neuro oncology | Rahul Jandial , Ph.D. Department of Surgery |
CNS biology, oncogenes, metastasis, neurodegeneration, neuronal stem cells | Brain and spinal cord injury, stroke, brain tumors, atherosclerosis |
| 11 | Pain | Tony Yaksh, Ph.D. Anesthesiology |
Molecular Pharmacology | Post operative and post trauma pain, pain in cancer, arthritis, fibromyalgia, multiple sclerosis, headache, neuropathic pain, back pain |
| 12 | Diabetes/Obesity | Sunder Mudaliar, M.D. Director, Diabetes Management and Clinical Trials |
Signal transduction, biochemistry, molecular pharmacology | Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes, diabetic nephropathy, diabetic retinopathy and neuropathy |
| 13 | Lung Biology and Diseases | Patricia Finn, M.D. Director, Pulmonary Diseases |
Inflammation, ion channels, cancer, biochemistry, microbiology | Asthma, Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease, Pulmonary infections, Lung Cancer, Lung transplantation, Pulmonary hypertension, Pulmonary embolism |
