June 2022 - Part I
The Department of Pathology & Laboratory Medicine is an integral part of the vibrant UCLA research enterprise and includes faculty members with a broad array of basic, translational, and clinical research interests.
Our first annual Research and Clinical Excellence Day was held on Friday, May 20, 2022. The event highlighted the ongoing basic and clinical research in our department. The event included presentations and keynote speakers along with a poster displays. Thank you to our speakers, Drs. Moatamed, Hanlin Wang, Ting Zhang, Jianyu Rao, Jeff Krane and Anica Wandler. Special thank you to Drs. Valerie Arboleda and Bogdan Pasaniuc for their terrific keynote speeches.
The poster presentations were equally diverse. Thank you also to our Department core labs for their talks (Dr. Xinmin Li – TCGB core) and poster presentations (Dr. Clara Magyar – TPCL/PRP and Dr. Monica Cappelletti – IAC).
I’d like to thank Jonathan Said (Vice Chair for Clinical Research) and the Research Day Committee (Drs. Jonathan Said (Chair), Neda Moatamed, Tom Lee, Jasmine Zhou and Bogdan Pasaniuc) for all their work bringing this event into reality.
I am proud to profile our new research awards as of July 1st. We congratulate the faculty principal investigators on their grant awards and look forward to their innovative findings and results.
The above publications, grants and collaborations underscore that UCLA is a highly interactive and collaborative environment in which interdisciplinary research flourishes. Our faculty and students continue to conduct important and meaningful basic, translational and clinical research and I look forward to learning about their future discoveries. Departmental research has continued to thrive and grow over the past decade. Our faculty publish their findings in many of the top biomedical journals such as Cell, Immunity, Molecular Cell, Nature Immunology, and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. As a small representative snapshot, since March 2021, our faculty has produced over 250 published papers and abstracts. To date for FY22, faculty researchers generated over $2.4 million in active extramural funding, including over $1.9 million from NIH. A comprehensive listing of the department’s Faculty Publications can be found here.
May 2022
2021 was a remarkable year for the UCLA Immunogenetics Center (UIC). As we enter 2022, we would like to highlight some of our achievements in clinical, quality, education, research, and areas of innovation.
Clinical
The UCLA Immunogenetics Center (UIC) provided Histocompatibility and Immunogenetics testing for 1,146 solid organ transplants for the 5 transplant centers we serve (UCLA, UC Davis, Harbor-UCLA, Scripps Green Hospital, Saint Joseph’s Orange) and performed Histocompatibility testing for 32 kidney paired donations at UCLA and 166 Bone Marrow Transplant (BMT) for UCLA, UC Davis, and Scripps Green Hospital.
UIC established new partnerships with 5 Regional OPOs & USC, Loma Linda, Cedars Sinai and CHLA to provide crossmatch testing for new UNOS allocation policy.
UIC and the Pathology Business office implemented a new Beaker billing system to increase efficiencies and collections. In addition, they set up a Tableau dashboard for tracking UIC finances and test volumes.
UIC welcomes Krystal Kendall, UIC Laboratory Manager, to our team.
Quality
Major quality projects implemented and completed. Here are highlights of two projects:
Education
The UIC educational program led by Jennifer Zhang, Ph.D., leveraged the zoom platform to expand training in Immunogenetics and Histocompatibility testing to our partner institutions. The faculty taught 6 educational lecture series to pathology residents, pathology fellows, transfusion medicine fellows, clinicians and transplant coordinators at UCLA, UC Davis, Harbor-UCLA, Scripps Green Hospital, Saint Joseph’s Orange, One Legacy, and Kaiser Permanente Southern California.
Research
UIC faculty and fellows published 24 publications, 1 book chapter, numerous abstracts. The UIC faculty submitted 8 grant applications. Drs. Reed and Valenzuela were awarded an NIAID Clinical Trials in Organ Transplantation (CTOT) grant investigating the efficacy of Clazakizumab to improve long-term lung allograft and patient survival. Dr. Elaine Reed collaborating with Drs. Meghan Pearl and Patty Weng were awarded an NIH CTOT grant to advance renal transplantation outcomes in children. Dr. Reed received NIAID CIVIC grant option focused on immune profiling influenza vaccine responses and a Keck foundation grant to study immunity to SARS-CoV-2 in high risk health care workers. Dr. Reed received a philanthropic grant donation from an Aestiva Software Founder, to establish a post-doctoral research fellowship focused on understanding mechanisms of antibody mediated heart transplant rejection.
Reference
UIC has provided educational and proficiency testing programs to the Immunogenetics Community for 47 years. The UCLA Cell and DNA Exchange Programs manufactured 747 kits for 111 labs (49 Domestic/62 International labs) and analyzed and prepared the consensus report. The International HLA DNA Exchange program sent out 804 surveys to 134 laboratories (25 domestic/109 international). Given the recent interest in non-classical HLA genes in transplantation and disease association the UCLA Cell Exchange program added analysis and reporting of non-traditional HLA loci (HLA-E, -F, -G, -H, MICB) to the DNA Exchange proficiency test program.
UIC serves as CAP proficiency test provider since 2003 and manufactured kits for 900 clients across 8 surveys and received 100% grade for performance.
Innovation/Collaboration
In a cross-specialty collaboration, UIC took part in the development of the Tolerance Protocol in Renal Transplantation at UCLA. This groundbreaking science enables transplant recipients to thrive without immunosuppressive drugs. UCLA Health is one of the only five medical centers in the world capable of this approach in transplantation. The tolerance approach calls for blending the donor’s and recipient’s immune systems through an infusion of the organ donor’s stem cells shortly after the organ transplant. This blending method called, “Mixed Chimerism”, prompts the recipient’s body to recognize, rather than reject, the new organ. Since powerful medicines are filtered through the kidneys, a goal of the tolerance approach is to extend the survival of the transplanted kidney. While tolerance has been achieved in transplants with well-matched sibling donor-recipient pairs, UCLA Health physicians, in collaboration with OneLegacy, intend to expand the protocol to include deceased donors. This would allow for other kinds of transplants to be done without the necessity for lifelong immunosuppression-drug regimens.
We are grateful for institutional, quality, and research excellence on behalf of our UIC team. We look forward to their continued innovation!
April 2022
In addition to our Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) Committee, our department also supports EDI within our research activities. I would like to spotlight our ongoing efforts to forward EDI in the research arenas.
Laboratory Medicine
UIC
Subtitle: LA-SPARTA Synergy Operation COVID-19 (LASSO COVID-19)
Purpose: To advance mutual goals and synergistic opportunities for CEAL / STOP COVID-19 and LA-SPARTA with a focus on at-risk and underserved south LA populations disproportionately impacted by this pandemic. A translational purpose of this initiative is to enhance personal and public health education to promote improved outcomes in underserved persons at highest risks of exposure and greatest vaccine hesitancy.
UIC + Anatomic Pathology
Department
As noted by leadership at our David Geffen School of Medicine, by educating the next generation of physicians, physician-scientists, and researchers, we will instill the core values of justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion that are inseparable from our institutional goals of excellence in all tenets of healthcare, research, education, and community engagement.
I am so proud of the EDI work being done by our faculty, our EDI committee and every member of our Department. We have done wonderful work this year, and I am excited to watch our efforts and accomplishments continue to grow!
March 2022
At the David Geffen School of Medicine, we believe that a strong organizational culture is critical to our ability to achieve our mission and vital to our well-being and cohesion as a community. The Cultural North Star helps us build and maintain an inclusive, mission-driven culture by mapping our decisions, actions and interactions to a shared framework. In that light, I would like to spotlight our monthly Staff Recognition Program. We thank these amazing individuals for their hard work, for their dedication to our patients, faculty and to their team, for the outstanding quality of their work and for their consistently helpful and positive outlook.
Blood & Platelet Center: Instituted a Virtual Recruitment Blood Drive involving local school districts during the pandemic when high school drives were not feasible. During the pandemic, the Blood & Platelet Center (BPC) built new connections in the community to support blood collections. The BPC recently partnered with five African American groups on campus to hold the first ever blood drive in honor of Black History Month. The BPC has implemented numerous AABB-recommended safety measures to protect donors and staff during the COVID-19 pandemic. Donations are essential to stabilize our inventory during the recent national blood shortage and can save lives!
Heart Walk: Nathan Okawa (RRUMC Core Lab) led the UCLA Heart Walk Challenge for the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine. For the second year in a row, team Pathology & Lab Medicine raised the most money in the Health System, besting 43 other UCLA teams!
We look forward to finding innovative ways to support clinical care, our patients, and our community.
February 2022
Each day we strive to uphold the UCLA mission to heal humankind by delivering leading-edge research, education, patient care, and community engagement.
I am so proud of the many ways in which we have worked together to support our teams and to continue to offer the highest quality services possible to our patients during the recent Omicron surge. When our staff members, trainees and faculty were out sick with COVID, or taking care of sick family members, other staff members, managers, trainees, faculty and leadership stepped up to help out. These efforts ensured there was no disruption in any of our testing, including our COVID testing, which allowed our patients to receive the care they needed.
When our blood supplies became critically low, our Blood and Platelet Donor Center ramped up their efforts, collecting over 1200 units of O negative blood (as well as other whole blood and platelet donations) from December through mid-January. Our Transfusion Medicine faculty, fellows and residents tirelessly reviewed transfusion requests during the weeks of the most severe shortage to ensure blood products were used appropriately. This, combined with the immense help and support from our colleagues in Anesthesia and Surgery, helped us successfully manage a challenging situation. Thank you all!
Our Transfusion Medicine service and Blood and Platelet Center also participated in local and national collaborative projects to collect and provide COVID-19 Convalescent Plasma (CCP) during the pandemic. They collected 1,200+ CCP units from 250+ unique donors in 400+ visits, transfused approximately 20 patients as part of the Johns Hopkins CCP study, transfused 240+ UCLA patients as part of the Mayo study and shipped 500+ CCP to other hospitals as part of the Mayo study. We are so grateful to the leadership and vision of Dr. Alyssa Ziman, Transfusion Medicine Director, and all our Transfusion Medicine Faculty in agreeing to perform and collaborate on these studies, as well as to all our staff who helped collect, process and ship these units.
Our Clinical Microbiology lab performed over 175,000 COVID tests last calendar year. In comparison, the next highest volume test in the Microbiology area has 70,000 tests. Ramping up to perform this volume of tests would not have been possible without the dedication and support of our Microbiology staff, fellows and faculty, all of whom have gone above and beyond to ensure our patients and clinicians could get COVID tests when needed, and get their results within 1 day, and often within 8 hours. We are grateful to Dr. Omai Garner, Microbiology Section Chief, for his strategic thinking, creative problem solving and unfailingly positive attitude during the pandemic.
We were the only academic medical center in the LA area that had the facilities, such as a negative pressure room, required to perform autopsies on patients known or suspected to be positive for COVID. I am so grateful to Dr. Greg Fishbein, our Autopsy Service Chief, for his dedication and commitment to ensuring that families could obtain autopsies, and get important answers regarding their loved one, during COVID. Our Autopsy faculty, residents and staff handled a much higher volume of autopsies over the past two years with dedication, professionalism, and compassion, and in the process helped many families understand why their loved one had passed. These autopsies also helped the clinical providers better understand the pathophysiologic etiologies for their patients’ signs, symptoms and death.
Despite the changes we have endured due to COVID-19, hope and perseverance shine as brightly as our hard work and determination to serve the university, hospital, community, and beyond. I am proud of our accomplishments and that our Department provides so many essential contributions to UCLA Health and UCLA campus.
January 2022
At the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA (DGSOM), we believe that healthcare is a human right. We are educating the next generation of physicians, physician-scientists, and researchers with that belief in mind. The core values of justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion are inseparable from our institutional goals of excellence in all tenets of healthcare, research, education, and community engagement.
The Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine EDI Committee consists of over 50 members representing faculty, trainees, and staff from all areas of our Department, including Anatomic Pathology, Laboratory Medicine, Outreach, research, and education. The group is led by our co-chairs, Dr. Danny Rodriguez, Dr. Dawn Ward, Dr. David Lu, and Jennifer Filipek.
Our EDI Committee’s goals are to:
The EDI Committee’s current focuses and subcommittees include:
For more information, please contact our EDI Co-Chairs at [email protected].
