(whooshing)
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- I'm gonna talk today about a proposal for the development
of a UC San Diego Center for Emerging Infections.
At UC San Diego,
we are poised to be able to respond to pandemics
and other public health crises.
We can do so because of our sort of unique position
along the US border with Mexico
and close to Los Angeles,
which is one of the largest cities in the US.
And the fact that we ourselves
are a large international city.
And we have the capabilities
of being able to both detect and respond
to public health emergencies,
such as is going on right now with COVID-19.
One of the problems
is we don't have great infrastructure for doing so.
All the pieces are in place,
but unfortunately,
those pieces aren't necessarily connected.
So I'll give a little background
about our response to COVID-19
to sort of refresh your memory.
So when the COVID-19 pandemic sort of first was recognized
in California, and particularly Southern California,
we were not necessarily amongst those
to be able to notice it.
And part of the reason for that
is that our clinical facilities weren't necessarily equipped
to be able to diagnose COVID-19.
Despite that,
we were still amongst the first in the entire state
to be able to provide testing for COVID-19.
We were able to accomplish this
not through developing our own test,
but through our partnerships with industry.
And to this point, through those partnerships,
we've been able to perform
about 35,000 COVID test in three months.
And just to provide a bit of context to that,
that's greater than really any other institution
serving the San Diego area.
That includes public health labs,
large reference laboratories such as Quest and LabCorp,
and more than Scripps and short institutions as well,
which see a much larger number of patients than we see.
And because of that
we've taken on a leadership role in the San Diego area,
where we've been able to provide testing
to nursing home, first responders,
live share for organ transplantation,
other hospital systems,
and we've even provided testing
to all of our health care workers,
as well as students at UC San Diego.
One thing that this pandemic exposed
really is our weaknesses.
And our biggest weakness
is probably that we're so reliant on industry
for COVID-19 testing.
And the reason for that sort of goes to the means
by which we've been developing our laboratory.
Our laboratory has become extraordinarily lean
over the years.
One of the reasons is that we've gotten rid
of all of our highly complex equipment,
and have been moving to greater technological innovations,
where we can perform more tests with fewer people.
The unfortunate problem is that when pandemics come about,
those pandemics in order to develop testing,
actually require those older,
more highly complex pieces of equipment.
One of the other weakness is that it exposes that
the Center for Advanced Laboratory Medicine
where the microbiology laboratory is housed,
has a large facility for research,
and unfortunately this facility
has remained somewhat idle over the years.
So there's a critical need for us to establish
or to piece together
all of the research that can be done at UC San Diego
with our complex diagnostic capabilities
so that we can take sort of our rightful position
in the city of San Diego,
as well as the region of Southern California
so that we can lead the way for future pandemics.
Just an example of how we can take advantage of this
is just what we have related to COVID-19.
So, in testing of 35,000 patients to this point,
we've got over 900 positive specimens,
we got hundreds of blood and serum specimens
from positive patients,
but we don't have that necessary infrastructure at the CALM
to be able to give this specimens
to those who might be able to perform
the research experiments necessary
so that we can have new advancements towards this disease.
So what we're proposing is really to sort of put ourselves
at the forefront of COVID research
is that we really need to be able
to combine the infrastructure of the CALM
with the basic and translational research
that's going on on-campus
to be able to position us to respond to COVID-19,
as well as other future infections.
And we view this
as UCSD really putting its footprint on the world.
So I asked sort of the question,
what can we do to change the world?
And first, we can be ready to respond to future pandemics.
While we were caught a little flat footed
for the current pandemic,
we now understand the things that we need to put in place
so that we are sort of positioned
to be a hub for Southern California
to respond to pandemics in the future.
We've been able to respond to pandemics
such as Zika, influenza, and Ebola in the past,
but probably in a much less coordinated manner
than we would like to be.
And we view our position as the largest academics center
in the San Diego area
is to really take on that leadership role.
And I know that UCSD has in some ways been looked at
as the little brother
of institutions such as UCLA in the past,
when this pandemic came about,
we were much better prepared,
for example, than UCLA was to respond to it,
such that people in LA were actually looking to UC San Diego
to perform their testing because UCLA could not keep up.
So we believe that through the development
of this emerging infectious disease center,
we can sort of serve as an early warning system,
not just for Southern California, but the entire nation,
as infectious diseases sort of start to spread.
So what we're proposing
is to start a Center for Emerging Infections at UC San Diego
that would be housed at the CALM facility.
This center would be run
mainly out of the Clinical Microbiology Laboratory.
This laboratory has two directors, including myself,
that are involved in basic research,
clinical research and translational research,
and is the perfect sort of place where we can bridge
between the research that goes on main campus
and the clinical diagnostics capability
that takes place at the CALM.
We do understand, however,
that there's not always gonna be a pandemic,
so that the center needs to be able to do things
outside of when we have a pandemic.
So what we are proposing
is that the center primarily would be used
to start a fellowship training program
so that we can train
future clinical microbiology laboratory directors.
And while the trainees would devote
a significant amount of time to their clinical training,
these trainees would have the time
to be able to also devote time
to developing the facilities at CALM
so that we can respond
to the research needs of the institutions.
So these trainees would be involved
in projects that would involve
community disease surveillance or infectious diseases,
developing some of the technologies
that we've been developing over at the CALM,
and this would involve utilizing advanced techniques
such as next generation sequencing
that are present in some of our genomics core facilities.
They would involve specialized techniques
such as at lab amplification,
that are taking place
in our diagnostic microbiology facilities.
And it also involves utilizing some of the methods
for characterizing immune responses
that are involved in our flow laboratory.
So what we need to be able to develop the center really is,
we need an investment in developing the fellowship program,
we need to have protected time for the center's directors,
and we need to be able
to take advantage of the infrastructure
that's already in place over at CALM
and we need to further develop our infrastructure
for being able to sample and test
really across the greater San Diego
and the greater Southern California region.
And we would like to continue
to cultivate many relationships
that are already in place at UC San Diego,
really across the Mexican border,
so that we can continue our surveillance.
Thank you.
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