Year 5. July 20. It’s All About the Pipeline!

Amanda Truong, MD, PhD Receives Burroughs Wellcome Fund Postdoctoral Enrichment Program Award

I will kick off this week’s many accolades with a round of applause for dermatology resident Amanda Truong, MD, PhD, who was recently awarded a Burroughs Wellcome Fund Postdoctoral Enrichment Program Award (PDEP). Dr. Truong, a UCLA Specialty Training and Advanced Research (STAR) Program fellow in the lab of Antoni Ribas, MD, PhD, is developing new medicines for chronic wound healing that she hopes will improve the lives of patients who, like her, come from historically underserved backgrounds.

“When I first found out about the award, I was super excited, surprised and just really, really happy,” Dr. Truong recalled. The grant provides $60,000 over three years to support the career development activities of fellows from underrepresented backgrounds who are working in mentored science or medical research. Dr. Truong plans to use the funds to advance studies on a topical drug that heals wounds more quickly by leveraging a pathway — the MAP kinase pathway — that is typically activated in cancer cells.

“We try to inhibit this pathway in the context of cancer, but we want it to be activated in wound healing because it promotes skin cells to grow faster,” she explained. So far there appears to be no risk that the drug will cause cancer because it is applied only to the wound itself for a short period of time and does not have the wide-ranging effects required to be oncogenic.

“The great thing about being in dermatology and studying this drug as a topical formulation is that it is only going on the skin and it’s only going to be applied onto the wound,” Dr. Truong explained. “All the effects are going to be localized just to that wound, so we don’t have to worry about other systemic effects like we would if we took it as a pill, for example.”

Dr. Truong noted that wound healing has classically been an underfunded area of research that disproportionately affects underserved populations. She is hopeful that she will be able to translate her work to the clinic, where it has the potential to make a major impact.

“There aren’t very many topical medications that are specifically to promote wound healing for chronic wounds,” she said. She added that as a physician-scientist, she conducts all of her work with a patient-first approach.

“They’re what I’m always thinking about when I’m designing experiments — I ask myself, ‘How is this going to be the most relevant for my patients, and how is this going to translate to the clinic in the future?’” Dr. Truong said. “It’s disheartening for me to see patients with chronic wounds that are difficult to treat, and it really means a lot to me that I’m able to work on this problem in my lab.”

She added that she is grateful to the Wellcome Burroughs Fund for the PDEP for providing resources earmarked specifically for early-career physician-scientists such as herself, a first-generation college student. She also shared that she feels that the DoM, the dermatology residency program and the UCLA STAR program have all provided her with the supportive environment required to take on this rigorous and important work.

“I feel very fortunate to have great mentorship through the STAR program, through the division of dermatology and through my mentor, Dr. Ribas,” Dr. Truong said.

Please join me in congratulating Dr. Truong on her new funding!

Alberto E. Lopez, PhD Receives Burroughs Wellcome Fund Postdoctoral Enrichment Program Award

I am equally thrilled to share with you that Alberto E. Lopez, PhD is also the recipient of a Burroughs Wellcome Fund Postdoctoral Enrichment Program Award (PDEP). Dr. Lopez is a postdoctoral scholar in the lab of Hrishikesh Kulkarni, MD, MSCI, where he conducts research on the immune system.

“I genuinely was surprised,” Dr. Lopez said. “You apply to these things, and you never really think you’re going to get them. I was so humbled.”

In the Kulkarni lab, Dr. Lopez studies the role of complement proteins — a set of immune system molecules that fight infection and clear out damaged cells — in enabling macrophages in the lung’s alveoli to remember previous infections, also known as trained immunity. He will use his PDEP funds to investigate how environmental exposures like wildfire smoke could potentially interrupt that process, leading to lung injury and infection from pathogens that can cause pneumonia. His experiments will involve exposing cells to such stressors then using either genomics or microscopy to understand how the complement proteins within them are altered as a result.

Dr. Lopez noted that the impact of wildfire smoke is of particular relevance given the positive trend in their intensity and frequency.

“As wildfires are growing greater and greater every year, there is a corresponding increase in the number of patients who are experiencing pneumonia,” he said. “The only treatment we have for serious pneumonia is antibiotics, so by understanding the mechanism that damages trained immunity in the alveoli, we can design alternate therapies to help mitigate lung injury.”

Dr. Lopez’s interest for this particular project is motivated partly by the ferocity of the 2025 L.A. Fires and their potential health consequences. He also enjoys the interdisciplinary nature of his work that gives him the chance to bring together environmental science and human health.

“Integrating these two different fields helps the community while also increasing our knowledge of lung health,” he said.

Like Dr. Truong, Dr. Lopez too is thankful for the Burrough Wellcome Fund’s support of scientists who come from underserved backgrounds. He has taken part in several such programs and feels that they have been integral to helping him advance his career.

“There were plenty of programs along my path as a scientist, specifically ones that were targeted towards increasing the number of underrepresented minorities in science, that helped me get to where I am now,” he said. “I’m so happy I can be in this position helping out the community as a whole.”

Dr. Lopez feels that the DoM is the right place for his work because of its history as a hub for translational biomedical research.

“The UCLA Department of Medicine moves discoveries from bench to patients, which is exactly the environment I need to translate trained immunity research into reduced lung injury severity,” he said. “At this stage in my career, I'm past just generating data — I want this work to help patients, and the DoM is built for that.”

He added that our strong research community is a huge benefit, too.

“Complement biology is also hard to do in isolation,” he said. “The DoM puts me next to people who see the immune system from different angles like systems biology, cell biology, environmental health and that collaboration is what will actually move this work forward.”

Congratulations, Alberto!

Amy R. Vandiver, MD, PhD Receives Burroughs Wellcome Career Award for Medical Scientists

Please join me in celebrating the immense accomplishment of dermatologist Amy R. Vandiver, MD, PhD, who recently received a highly competitive career development award from the Burroughs Wellcome Fund to advance her research on the role of mitochondrial DNA damage in aging and skin disease. Dr. Vandiver is one of our UCLA STAR program alumni who is building an independent lab here in the department, and this grant represents a significant milestone for her career.

“I was really excited, because this gives me time and a safety net to do the work I'm most excited about,” Dr. Vandiver said. “It felt good to know that the evaluation panel thought the things I’ve been thinking about and doing are worthwhile.”

Dr. Vandiver’s research uses sequencing techniques to identify aging cells and tissues that have accumulated DNA damage and uses cell culture models to test the impact of this damage on cell function, illuminating a pathway towards offsetting the effects of aging.

“I focus on the mitochondrial genome because it’s the genome that accumulates the most damage and really gives us this insight into the cells that have had the most stress as we age,” Dr. Vandiver said. Her lab studies skin, non-melanoma skin cancer tissue and stem cell-based culture models to learn how mitochondrial DNA damage affects different cell types and identify possible interventions. Her grant funding — which amounts to around $700,000 distributed over the next five years — will add more clinically relevant cell types to her stem cell models. It will allow her to optimize custom single cell sequencing approaches and to look across a large number of tissues from the Genome-Tissue Expression Project to understand differences in the aging tissues as a whole, not just single cells that accumulate damage.

“My grant proposal asked the question, ‘How does the accumulation of mitochondrial genome mutations guide potential interventions into the aging process?’” Dr. Vandiver noted. “With this new funding, we’re going to do that from three different angles — from cell culture, from single cell sequencing in skin and then from bulk sequencing data across tissues.”

Dr. Vandiver said that the Burroughs Wellcome Fund grant is particularly important for her at this phase of her career, when she is still in the early stages of establishing herself as an independent investigator. She added that she grateful to be building her career here in the DoM, where she can work across divisions with other scientists who are conducting aging research, like oncologist Mina S. Sedrak, MD, MS and geriatrician Jonathan Wanagat, MD, PhD. She enjoys continued support from the mentors she found in the STAR program and in the UCLA Clinical and Translational Science Institute (CTSI). She shared that her STAR and CTSI advisers helped her prepare for a panel interview with senior scientists that was part of the Burroughs Wellcome award application process, even recruiting other faculty to take part in the process.

“They really wanted me to succeed,” Dr. Vandiver said. “One pair of faculty met with me twice to optimize my talk. I think the amount of senior faculty members that really care about junior faculty is unique to UCLA.”

Congratulations, Amy! 

Gloria Yiu, MD, PhD Receives UC Early Career Faculty Research Excellence Award

Two faculty in the UCLA Department of Medicine were among an exceptional group of recipients across all 10 University of California campuses to be given UC Early Career Faculty Research Excellence Awards, a $50,000 one-time award to support their research. The first one on whom I would like to shine the spotlight is Gloria Yiu, MD, PhD, a rheumatologist and STAR program alumna who is working on treatments for rare rheumatic conditions.

“I was thrilled, and especially grateful because grants like this are rare in that it supports early-stage research, which is the hardest stage to get funded," Dr. Yiu said. “It gives us the opportunity to take risks, choose new directions, and ask the questions we most want to tackle."

Dr. Yiu’s lab investigates immune cell development to help design better treatments for immune conditions. One arm of the lab is investigating rare diseases caused by genetic mutations and explores ways to correct mutations at the source to treat disease. The UC Early Career Faculty Award will advance the Yiu Lab’s work on Blau syndrome, a very rare inflammatory disease caused by a single DNA typo that leads to widespread immune cell alteration.

“We want to understand how that one simple change causes dysregulation in different types of immune cells, and then also look at different ways to correct that gene mutation,” Dr. Yiu said. Her team is using various CRISPR-based methods to intervene, comparing and contrasting different approaches.

Dr. Yiu noted that the gene behind Blau syndrome is also involved in other, more common conditions, such as inflammatory bowel disease.

“Any fundamental biology we understand about gene function and these mutations will have further reach than Blau syndrome itself,” she said.

Many of the patients in her rheumatology clinic are prescribed lifelong immunosuppression.

“For most gene correction approaches, we are hoping to offer a one-time treatment for patients, as opposed to the current mainstay,” she said.

As a physician-scientist, Dr. Yiu sees that there are clear limitations to what she can offer her patients in the clinic — and that there are opportunities for cutting-edge science to surpass those limitations.

“Having that perspective, I feel compelled to try to close that gap,” she said. “At its core, science is the discovery of new knowledge, an innately curious and creative process made even more rewarding by its capacity to help patients. I feel fortunate to get to do both.”

Dr. Yiu added that she is grateful to carry out her work in the DoM because she feels that the department understands the unique challenges that face physician-scientists as well as the unique contribution that a physician-scientist can provide.

“Having that kind of alignment in values matters so much, I’m happy to be part of a community that’s collaborative and supportive,” she said. “It makes doing the work — which is challenging — all the more fun and worthwhile.”

Congratulations, Gloria!

Jonathan D. Herman, MD, PhD Receives UC Early Career Research Excellence Grant

The DoM’s next UC Early Career Research Excellence Grant recipient is on an award-winning streak this year: Jonathan D. Herman, MD, PhD, a member of the infectious diseases division, also received a $5.4 million grant earlier this year to advance H. pylori vaccine research in his lab. Now, his second award will give him the runway he needs to conduct even more groundbreaking research.

“I was really excited when I heard I received this award,” Dr. Herman said. “It’s really going to allow us to start new directions and really go in ways that I think are going to be exciting for immunology and for translational medicine.”

Dr. Herman’s lab focuses on understanding how the immune system works and how to use insights from it to develop new vaccines and treatments for infectious diseases. He and his team study B cells — the subtype of immune cells that makes antibodies in response to pathogens — and employ computational and systems biology approaches to understand how that works in human patients and vaccine recipients.

“A lot of immunology research focuses on the part of the immune system that we study, antibodies and B cells, and happens in model systems such as animal models,” he said. “Because we’re limited in terms of the type of experiments we can do in humans, we’re trying to use advanced computational approaches to get those insights from a very different type of experiment.”

That work involves, for example, the measurement of thousands of characteristics about a single patient’s antibody response to a vaccine, then using machine learning to try to understand the features that distinguish whether or not they responded to it, or the clinical symptoms they would develop if they were infected with the pathogen. The UC Early Career Research Excellence Award will help his lab develop a new technology to ask these questions further upstream in the immune system by measuring the antigen specificity of B cells to hundreds of thousands of antigens at a time.

“This is going to allow us to really study these things in humans as opposed to the need to work in mice and non-human primates,” he said. “With this new method, we’re going to try to understand new targets that are protective for malaria vaccine development.”

This stands to benefit patients in two different ways. First, the technology will open up a new field of immunology study, one that could apply to many different infections, vaccines and disease processes. Second, it will specifically improve the field’s understanding of the key targets in malaria that could lead to highly effective, long-lasting vaccines — a significant need, as the two World Health Organization (WHO)-approved vaccines currently approved for malaria offer only partial, short-term protection.

“Our hope is that by using these new approaches, we can find new targets that will let us make vaccines that last for years and are much better at protecting people,” Dr. Herman said.

Dr. Herman has been fascinated by global health and infectious diseases since he was an undergraduate, when he began working on malaria and drug development. He focused his curiosity on immunology after realizing that no drug works to protect a person from infection without the help of the immune system.

“Now, my passion is really figuring out how we can harness the human immune system to protect people from infections,” he said. “Clinically, I work as an infectious disease doctor, day in and day out taking care of people who are suffering from very severe bacterial, viral and fungal infection. My hope is that by using these techniques, we can alleviate all that and put myself out of a job!”

Dr. Herman feels that the DoM is the right place for him to conduct his research because of its support for physician-scientists like him. He shared that while he was in the process of remodeling his lab, other faculty gave him tissue culture space and other materials to ensure that he could keep his work going.

“The UCLA Department of Medicine has very much helped develop my career as a physician-scientist,” he said. “Being able to balance clinical work, research and fundraising while staying on the cutting edge of research in the current age is challenging, and the DoM has been a supportive environment that’s allowed our program to flourish.”

Please join me in congratulating Jon!

Aleksandr Gorin, MD, PhD Awarded K08 Grant to Fund Independent Lab Focused on Macrophage Memory Research

I am pleased to share that Aleksandr Gorin, MD, PhD, who recently joined the infectious diseases division faculty following his graduation from the UCLA Infectious Diseases Fellowship and STAR Program, has been awarded a K08 grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). This grant, which is also known as a Mentored Clinical Scientist Development Award, is designed to promote the work of early-career clinicians who wish to develop independent research careers as physician-scientists.

“I was thrilled to learn that I received the grant. I think that imposter syndrome has loomed large throughout my medical training, so seeing that the NIH values my work and ideas was really rewarding and validating,” Dr. Gorin said. “I was also super excited that I would now have the opportunity to launch my own independent research program.”

Dr. Gorin’s project will help him dig deep into the biology of immune cells called macrophages. He noted that his work explores a paradigm shift that has only recently taken place in the past 10 years: For the four decades prior, it was believed that the immune system had two distinct parts — the innate immune system, thought to be the body’s first line of defense against pathogens, and the adaptive immune system, which was believed to be slower to activate but stores memories of specific infections.

“However, work in the last decade has flipped this on its head, showing that innate immune cells can actually become specialized and ‘remember’ prior infections or insults,” Dr. Gorin explained. “With this funding, I want to figure out exactly how these innate cells encode this memory at a molecular level, whether we can ‘erase’ it, and what role this process plays in human health.”

To do that, he and his lab will grow human macrophages in a petri dish, expose them to various types of stimuli and study their response — such as the different genes that are activated, for instance, and how their epigenome is altered to “remember” the event. Concurrently, they will leverage computational tools, also known as bioinformatics, to analyze large datasets of macrophages taken from human patients.

“By comparing our lab-grown cells to those isolated from patients with various diseases, we can see how this memory plays out in real-world human health,” Dr. Gorin said.

He added that, for patients, the long-term clinical payoff of understanding these mechanisms could be enormous. Although the notion that the innate immune system has its own form of memory is a recent discovery, emerging data suggests it plays a large role in human health — such as in the case of autoimmune conditions.

“This memory can be a double-edged sword: It’s protective when it helps us fight off infections, but it can be harmful when it causes cells to become hyper-inflammatory when they shouldn’t be,” Dr. Gorin said. “If we understand the mechanics of this memory, we can build therapies to manipulate it. We could theoretically boost innate memory to make vaccines more effective, or ‘erase’ bad memory to turn off chronic inflammatory diseases.”

He added that UCLA is the right place for this fantastic work because of its people.

“The short answer is the people! The UCLA Department of Medicine has been incredibly supportive of my career throughout my training. Transitioning to an independent researcher is challenging, and having the right community is essential,” Dr. Gorin said. “The combination of administrative support, collaborative colleagues, access to vital clinical samples and world-class resources makes UCLA an environment that is genuinely hard to beat anywhere in the country."

Congratulations, Alex! 

Linda L. Demer, MD, PhD and Tamer Sallam, MD, PhD Weigh In on Solutions for Physician-Scientist Shortage

Physician-scientists are an essential bridge between scientific discovery and advances in patient care. However, there is a lack of dedicated national infrastructure to support researchers along this career path — even as the need for them grows. As a result, there are far too few physician-scientists to meet the need.

The DoM is committed to alleviating this shortage, and I am honored to have recently contributed to a white paper published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation (JCI-Insight) outlining a national framework to support physician-scientists. The framework calls for three interconnected pillars to support scientific success: academic support through protected research time and mentorship, financial models that support long-term investment in research careers, and organizational infrastructure that coordinates resources and career development opportunities at institutions.

To continue the conversation about the underlying factors and potential solutions to the physician-scientist shortage, I reached out to Linda L. Demer, MD, PhD and Tamer Sallam, MD, PhD, executive co-directors of the UCLA Specialty Training and Advanced Research (STAR) Program. Dr. Sallam is also vice-chair and incoming chair of the American Society for Clinical Investigation Physician-Scientist Development Committee, which played an important role in facilitating the workgroup behind the new JCI white paper.

“The development of these recommendations is important because it recognizes the shortcomings of current paradigms for supporting physician-scientists,” Dr. Sallam said. “There is a collective need to take action to preserve a robust physician-scientist workforce. One critical element is providing insight into how we communicate value.”

He added that the unique contribution of physician-scientists is easy to celebrate on paper but hard to defend in a budget meeting.

“Making that value legible in financial and organizational terms, not just aspirational ones, may be what determines whether this workforce survives the next generation,” Dr. Sallam said.

Dr. Demer has spoken out about this problem since 1995, when she was a co-author on a seminal article sounding the alarm titled “Physician-Scientists as Missing Persons” in the Journal of Investigative Medicine. She and Olujimi Ajijola, MD, PhD, a STAR graduate who serves as co-director of the UCLA-Caltech Medical Scientist Training Program (MSTP) both contributed to another key article on the topic published in 2018, titled “Training the Physician-Scientist: Views from Program Directors and Aspiring Young Investigators”.

“I’ve seen this shortage growing relentlessly for the past three decades,” Dr. Demer said. One major problem is a leaky pipeline: While there is no dearth of talent or interest in medical science among first-year medical students, about half of all fellows who receive funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award (NRSA) program — a major mechanism for financing physician-scientist training — drop out within a few years. The biggest barrier appears to be the transition from K awards to R awards that is, from awards that fund career development to those that are awarded for specific independent research projects.

“That could be because it’s the time when MD-PhD graduates, who are 4 to 6 years older than their clinical peers, are often taking on large personal responsibilities with families,” Dr. Demer said. “The financial gradient between academics and non-academic careers is steep, easily drawing away those with less developed interest or ability to commit.”

Other factors prevent would-be physician-scientist trainees from embarking on the path in the first place. One common reason Dr. Demer hears is the sheer duration of training — it takes about 14 years from the start of college merely to complete subspecialty clinical training, and an additional 3 to 5 years is required for meaningful research experience. A second, related reason is the time it takes to obtain independent research funding.

What’s more, as Dr. Demer pointed out, the competitive nature of today’s healthcare systems understandably exclude physician-scientists from serving as attendings, as discussions about research during rounds may delay discharge and lower the efficiency of healthcare delivery. This loss of role models for medical students and house staff is likely to contribute to loss of interest in a research career.

“Lastly, what’s often said only in one-on-one discussions, is the stress and distress that medical students observe in more senior physician-scientists engaged in grant writing,” Dr. Demer said. “This is exacerbated by recent changes at the NIH, including grant suspensions, delays and non-scientific review criteria.”

We have captured the consequences of this pressure in our own annual surveys by the DoM Office of Wellness, which to date have tended to show higher rates of burnout among physician-scientists, and women in particular. Another exacerbating factor that ultimately perpetuates pipeline attrition is a sense of isolation from other physician-scientists among their daily or weekly contacts or social sphere.

While we continue to work through solutions to address the physician-scientist shortage, we can be proud that our STAR program here at UCLA has been held as a national model for ideal infrastructure to support physician-scientist training, as several researchers in this edition of the newsletter alone have attested. It offers a flexible training model and a more optimal training schedule that is concentrated on the fellowship level, as well as a strong community of physician-scientists and mentors who offer lifelong career support. STAR also provides stable funding through the completion of research training and transition to faculty.

“This puts us great strides ahead of our peer institutions,” Dr. Demer said. 

National Clinician Scholars Program Welcomes New Cohort and Invites Applicants 

I would like to close by welcoming the incoming scholars for the UCLA National Clinician Scholars Program (NCSP), a prestigious two-year fellowship program that combines rigorous research training with leadership development and individualized mentorship to prepare scholars for careers that make a lasting impact. This year’s cohort brings together outstanding physicians and PhD nurses from leading institutions across the country who are committed to advancing health care through research, leadership, innovation and community partnership.

“We are thrilled to welcome this exceptional cohort to UCLA and look forward to the impact they will make as the next generation of clinician leaders dedicated to improving health care through research, innovation and systems change,” UCLA NCSP Program Director Joann Elmore, MD, MPH said.

Our incoming scholars include:

• Victoria Chen, MD, Internal Medicine
• Annie Hoang, MD, Emergency Medicine
• Beverly Kyalwazi, MD, Internal Medicine (Gastroenterology)
• Christian Noval, PhD, RN, Nursing
• Jessica Reed, MD, Pediatrics
• Cristina Valdovinos, MD, MPH, Internal Medicine
• Yi-Ping Wen, PhD, RN, Nursing
• Kevin Yang, MD, Psychiatry

These new scholars are deeply dedicated to advancing evidence-based healthcare, including learning how to evaluate technology and new artificial intelligence (AI) models of care. Many of the scholars are motivated by what they have witnessed while working clinically or their experiences as part of underserved communities. For example, Dr. Valdovinos witnessed firsthand the interplay between social factors and health when she was growing up in South Los Angeles as the daughter of Mexican immigrants, an experience that informed her decision to pursue internal medicine and primary care as well as to apply to the UCLA NCSP.

“I decided to apply to the UCLA NCSP because of its legacy of training leaders in health care,” Dr. Valdovinos, a recent alum of our UCLA Internal Medicine Primary Care Residency program, said. “I know that the program will help me develop leadership and research skills that can be leveraged to advocate for vulnerable communities.”

NCSP scholars complete multiple comprehensive research projects during their time in the program. Dr. Valdovinos plans to focus on digital healthcare delivery tools, specifically remote patient monitoring; she will assess the feasibility and impact of these tools on chronic disease management, study their implementation in safety net health systems and learn how they can be used to expand access to care without significantly increasing healthcare costs.

Ultimately, Dr. Valdovinos hopes to gain the expertise she needs in leadership, collaboration and implementation science to pursue her goal of successfully leading a health services research group that creates and implements innovation in safety net systems.

“Moreover, I want to learn how to effectively partner with community stakeholders and organizations both to inform my clinical practice and to improve health care delivery,” she said.

Congratulations to our matriculating scholars! For those of you who are interested, the NCSP is accepting applications through August 15, 2026 for the cohort starting July 1, 2027. Scholars receive training in health services and outcomes research, implementation science, AI and bioinformatics, health policy and health system innovation. NCSP alumni go on to pursue a broad range of careers, including in academic medicine and NIH funded research; health system leadership and clinical operations; government, health policy; population health and public health; and industry. In addition to rigorous mentorship and training, scholars become part of a national network of faculty, mentors and alumni that continues to support career development long after graduation.

Hi Dr. Abel,

One of the people on my team knows! answer is below… He’s even been there! 😊

Cathy

-----------------------

Hi Cathy,

Not sure if we can respond to Dr. Abel. But to answer his little riddle.
The location is Rosslyn Chapel & The movie is The Da Vinci Code.
I have been to this place. 
Not sure how to tell him.

Thanks, 

Scotland's Rossyln Chapel! Long story but I have a Scottish uncle 🙂

Hi Dr. Abel

I hope you and your family are well! The photo is of Rosslyn Chapel used in the Da Vinci Code.

This is a very curious puzzle you have presented. Thinking out loud:

• Looks like Rosslyn Chapel was founded in 1446, but Dr. Brent is not that old even if you divide it 1446 by 12! 
• The Holy Grail is a theme in the Da Vinci Code and Christ had 12 disciples…thinking about this one…