Dean Schillinger, director of the UCSF Center for Vulnerable Populations (CVP) at San Francisco General Hospital, received a national award for research leading to better communication in health care.

The University of California, San Francisco has been designated to lead a new consortium that will study a group of severe immune disorders known as primary immunodeficiencies and aims to improve treatment for these often life-threatening diseases. The Primary Immune Deficiency Treatment Consortium comprises 13 centers throughout the United States and has a $6.25 million funding commitment over five years from the National Institutes of Health.

Symbolizing a major triumph for UCSF, the University of California and the scientific community at large, molecular biologist Elizabeth Blackburn, PhD, became UCSF's fourth scientist to be tapped to receive the prestigious Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

Actress Kathleen Turner will visit the research labs of the Rosalind Russell Arthritis Center at UCSF to gain a better understanding of the impact of autoimmune diseases and to learn firsthand about ongoing UCSF research for potential therapies.

A collaboration between scientists at Vanderbilt University and the University of California, San Francisco has led to the first direct information about the molecular structure of prions. In addition, the study has revealed surprisingly large structural differences between natural prions and the closest synthetic analogs that scientists have created in the lab.

Molecular biologist Elizabeth H. Blackburn, PhD, 60, of the University of California, San Francisco, received the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine on December 10th, 2009 in Stockholm, Sweden.

The 2009 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, awarded today to UCSF’s Elizabeth Blackburn, PhD – along with Carol Greider, PhD, of Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and Jack Szostak, PhD, of Massachusetts General Hospital – recognizes the importance of the most fundamental kind of basic biological science.