Scientists at Gladstone and UCSF form two new research institutes

In a previous blog post, we talked about how scientists at the Gladstone Institutes have shifted their current operations towards helping with the current coronavirus pandemic. Now scientists at Gladstone and U.C. San Francisco have formed two new research institutes to broaden its impact on unsolved diseases such as COVID-19.

One of these institutes is the Gladstone Institute of Virology and will be lead by Dr. Melanie Ott. The immediate focus of this newly formed institution will be the current coronavirus pandemic. Additionally, it will focus on searching for new therapies against future infectious diseases. The Gladstone Institute of Virology will focus on how viruses interact with human cells to cause disease and how to intervene in that process. Dr. Ott’s goal is to identify pathways these viruses use to infect human cells as a way to develop innovative treatments.

In a press release from Gladstone Institutes, Dr. Ott talks about the goal of her work in more detail.

“Contrary to the current strategy of combining several drugs to treat one virus, we want to develop one drug against multiple viruses. As antibiotic resistance becomes an increasingly urgent problem, we will also delve into how we can use viruses as therapeutics, which involves using viruses against themselves or to fight bacteria.”

The second institute is a collaboration between UCSF and Gladstone Institutes and is called the Gladstone-UCSF Institute of Genomic Immunology. It will be lead by Dr. Alexander Marson and will combine the study of genomics and immunology to develop new therapies. One of the primary goals will be to understand the role that genetics play in human immune cells. By manipulating these cells, the immune system could potentially be altered to treat cancer, infectious diseases, autoimmune diseases, and even neurological conditions such as Alzheimer’s.

In the same press release from Gladstone Institutes, Dr. Marson discusses the importance these collaborations hold for pushing scientific innovation.

“These rapidly advancing fields are starting to converge in ways that are too big for any single lab to take on. The impetus to start a new institute was the realization that we need to create an ecosystem to bring together people with different perspectives to think about transformative opportunities for how patients can be treated in the future.”