UC San Diego’s Collaborative Research Efforts, Community-Based Care Initiatives Are in Its DNA

We are continuing our new series, Media Day, where we spotlight individual medical institutions and infectious disease programs. Today, we spotlight University of California (UC) San Diego’s Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences and the university’s extensive research programs and community-based health programs to serve the local population.

UC San Diego’s Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences has earned a reputation as one of the top pharmacy programs in the country since its founding in 2002. The school has been rated the twelfth best pharmacy school in the nation, according to U.S. News & World Report, out of more than 140 accredited schools in the country.

It was also voted seventh in the nation for research funding awards, according to the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy, with $34 million secured. San Diego is part of a research hub that incorporates many institutions with bench science at its core.

“The San Diego area, as well as the immediate surrounding of the campus we call the La Jolla Mesa, is one of the world's largest biotechnology and biopharmaceutical clusters, and there are approximately 800 different entities that are developing drugs, all the way from major pharmaceutical [companies] like Pfizer, Novartis, and Johnson & Johnson that are here as well as small and midsized start-ups, many of which have close interactions with the university,” Victor Nizet, MD, vice chair for basic research in the Department of Pediatrics and chief of the Division of Host-Microbe Systems & Therapeutics at UC San Diego, said.

He oversees the Nizet Lab at the university, which has published over 500 articles contributing to groundbreaking research in innate immunity, host-pathogen interactions, bacterial pathogenesis, translational medicine, and novel antimicrobial therapeutics. The laboratory has fostered the growth and scientific development of over 200 students, fellows, and postdoctoral researchers during their training.

One of the unique elements to UC San Diego’s program is its curriculum and research driven by its faculty.

“We not only have coursework and laboratory courses taught by world-class faculty who are pushing the frontiers, but students can also get directly involved in hypothesis-driven research, clinical research, and community-based research,” Nizet said.

In terms of its core principles, one that stands out is UC San Diego’s collaborative environment. “I don't think there's any institution in which collaboration is more valued and facilitated. It's really in our fiber, in our ethos,” Nizet said. “This includes collaborations with researchers down at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, who are discovering natural products from the ocean. We're studying their medicinal properties. And chemists and biologists are studying fundamental processes that we then see how that's relevant for medicine.”

And in terms of reasons why students would consider UC San Diego, Nizet said there are a lot of career and quality-of-life reasons to do so.

“We are immediately adjacent to an international border, which brings a lot of interesting medicine questions related to access to care and infectious diseases…. There are many programs that get our students out into volunteering in community settings. We have student-run free clinics for homeless populations. We have a lot of programs that are outreach K-12 [kindergarten to 12th grade] in terms of creating the pipeline for science investigation,” Nizet said. “And it's a beautiful place to live, with very family-oriented communities. I think people find no matter what their recreational interests are, they can easily access it here, with good weather and nature.”

In the next episode, Nizet will discuss some of his ongoing research.