Salk Institute

An internationally known cell biologist has been chosen to head the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, ending a search that began last year when ill health unexpectedly forced Nobel laureate Francis Crick to step down. Salk officials announced Monday that Dr. Thomas Dean Pollard, who has directed the department of cell biology and anatomy at Johns Hopkins University for 19 years, will become the institute's ninth president and chief executive officer, effective July 1.

As the world gears up to celebrate DNA Day on Thursday -- the anniversary of the publication of scholarly papers that explained the structure of the molecule -- the letters of Francis Crick, one of the scientists involved in the work, are in the news. In a letter published Wednesday in the journal Nature, researchers from the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York described a letter Crick wrote in 1961 to the biologist Jacques Monod, laying out some background about the DNA discovery.

I was in Los Angeles recently for the opening of a retrospective at MOCA of my father, architect Louis I. Kahn (Calendar, "The Evolution of Kahn," Feb. 27). Of course, it can't help but make a son proud to see his father's reputation continue to grow long after his death, but the evening contained a bitter irony for me.

Three days after the mass shooting at a Batman movie screening in Colorado, the profile of the suspected killer has only become more ambiguous and confounding. At first, the image of James E. Holmes was of an incredibly smart, hopelessly shy young man who barely spoke -- a loner isolated in a brilliant mind. Then people came forward and said, yes, he was quiet, but he had circles of friends with whom he joked around and socialized. He was a counselor at a camp in the hills above Glendale in 2008, and snapshots from camp show him beaming.

When scientists unravel the genetic signature of Alzheimer's disease, will women be advised to choose abortion rather than bearing a child who will acquire the disease six decades or so after birth? If a child is an asymptomatic carrier of the cystic fibrosis gene, when should his parents tell him so? Should his girlfriends all be screened to make sure he doesn't end up marrying another carrier of the gene?

The Salk Institute for Biological Studies announced Tuesday that it had received a $30-million donation, the largest single gift in its 43-year history. Dr. Richard Murphy, president and chief executive of the Salk Institute, said the gift would help the institute broaden its research and attract new faculty. Officials declined to identify the benefactor.

When it comes to science, researchers at the Salk Institute in La Jolla are at the top of the heap: trying to crack the secrets of AIDS, gene therapy, what makes the brain tick, and more. But in media relations, Salk lags. Unlike UC San Diego and other science centers, Salk does not have a public-affairs staff that encourages media attention. Interviews are rare.

Frederic de Hoffmann, co-founder of a seminal San Diego research corporation and the man who lifted the Salk Institute to financial stability, resigned Wednesday as chief executive officer of Salk because he is infected with the AIDS virus. "Dr. de Hoffmann had coronary bypass surgery in March of 1984, before AIDS virus testing in blood was done. Several weeks ago, Dr.

When Didier Trono first saw the elegant white buildings overlooking the Pacific in La Jolla, the Salk Institute looked to him like "the temple on the cliff." Now Trono has become one of the priests in that biology temple, the first in a core group that will look for basic knowledge that could help science outwit AIDS, the disease that killed the institute's longtime president last year.

Salk Institute and a subsidiary, the Salk Institute Bio-Technology Industrial Associates Inc., have signed five-year leases for space at McKellar Development of La Jolla's McKellar Research Center in Torrey Pines. The $1,016,175 lease provides 9,968 square feet space of combined space in the $25-million center. The Salk Institute is scheduled to occupy its new offices in September, while SIBIA will complete its move this month.

Wylie W. Vale Jr., a professor at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla and an internationally renowned expert on brain hormones who led a team of Salk researchers that discovered the brain hormone that triggers the body's reaction to stress, has died. He was 70. Vale died unexpectedly in his sleep Jan. 3 while on vacation in Hana on the Hawaiian island of Maui, said his wife, Betty. The cause of death has not been determined. The Texas-born Vale, who joined the Salk Institute in 1970, became one of the world's leading authorities on peptide hormones and growth factors that provide communication between the brain and endocrine system (the organs that produce the body's hormones)

Two studies released Wednesday by the journal Nature show that work remains before so-called induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells are ready for use in laboratory studies or clinical therapies. iPS cells are body cells that are programmed to unwind back into an embryonic state.  Like embryonic stem cells, they have potential to develop into any other type of cell in the body. But they don't reprogram perfectly, researchers are showing.  About a month ago, a team at the Salk Institute showed that iPS cells hold on to "memory" of their past identity.

The Salk Institute for Biological Studies announced Tuesday that it had received a $30-million donation, the largest single gift in its 43-year history. Dr. Richard Murphy, president and chief executive of the Salk Institute, said the gift would help the institute broaden its research and attract new faculty. Officials declined to identify the benefactor.

A La Jolla scientist and two colleagues from MIT and Cambridge University who used the simple roundworm to unravel the complex processes controlling the birth and death of cells in humans on Monday received the 2002 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine.

Regular running and intensive mental exercise may revitalize the mind by spurring the growth of new brain cells responsible for learning and memory, new animal experiments suggest. The research, made public Monday, sheds light on how the effects of daily experience can foster new brain cells in adult mammals from mice to human beings. In essence, the research suggests that an active life--whether the activity be physical or mental--can have a positive impact on the brain.

An internationally known cell biologist has been chosen to head the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, ending a search that began last year when ill health unexpectedly forced Nobel laureate Francis Crick to step down. Salk officials announced Monday that Dr. Thomas Dean Pollard, who has directed the department of cell biology and anatomy at Johns Hopkins University for 19 years, will become the institute's ninth president and chief executive officer, effective July 1.

Jonas Edward Salk, the legendary immunologist who earned the undying admiration of the American people but the scorn of his scientific peers with his dramatic discovery of the first polio vaccine, died Friday of congestive heart failure. He was 80. Although Salk had a history of heart trouble, his death was unexpected. Last October he participated in 80th birthday celebrations that attracted hundreds of people and ranged from Westwood to La Jolla.