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In my remarks at the beginning of our Research Day last week, I noted that the future of innovation and discovery in the UCLA Department of Medicine (DoM) is inextricably tied to our ability to ensure that we provide an environment that supports the continuum of each career arc. As we achieve this, I envision that there will be no gaps in our ability to be LEADERS because we provide a home for those at the beginning of their research careers, while ensuring that as careers evolve and mature, momentum is not lost and will accelerate towards the pinnacle. As this occurs, we want to build a culture where mentorship and collaboration becomes the thread that ensures the continuity of this critical mission. This week, I reflect on bookends, illustrating and celebrating success at both ends of scientific career arc, to underscore why we must seek not only to welcome colleagues at the early stage of their career, but ensure that they thrive, while not ignoring their evolving needs as careers evolve. The future of our department as an engine of innovation depends on this.

Devesha Kulkarni, PhD and Gregory Donaldson, PhD Awarded NIH New Innovator Awards

I begin by celebrating the success of two of our early career faculty in successfully competing for and receiving National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director’s New Innovator Awards. These awards provide $4,745,000/yr for four years to support early career investigators of exceptional creativity who propose bold and highly innovative research projects, with the potential to produce a major impact on broad, important areas relevant to the NIH mission.

Impactful discoveries often begin with a question that challenges what we think we know. For Devesha Kulkarni, PhD and Gregory Donaldson, PhD, NIH Director’s New Innovator Awards are creating room to follow two such questions, take scientific risks and explore new ways of understanding the complex relationships among the immune system, the intestinal lining and the gut microbiome. Their research takes different paths, but shares the common thread of curiosity: What might we discover when we look beyond what biology is expected to do?

The first of these questions takes us to the intestinal lining, where Dr. Kulkarni and her team are uncovering how an unexpected source of immune protection may help the gut respond to injury and restore its balance.

Devesha Kulkarni, PhD: Finding New Ways to Restore Balance in the Gut

Every day, the gut must distinguish between signals that are harmless and those that pose a threat. When that delicate balance is disrupted, an overactive immune response can contribute to inflammatory diseases such as ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s disease.

Assistant Professor of Medicine in the Division of Clinical Nutrition Dr. Kulkarni and the Kulkarni Gut Lab are looking more closely at one part of that defense system: complement proteins.

“For decades, the complement system was thought to operate primarily in the circulation and originate in the liver,” said Dr. Kulkarni. “My team and others have helped reveal a more complex picture.”

Research from her lab has shown that complement proteins are also active at mucosal surfaces, including the gut, and findings from the lab suggest they play roles in protecting intestinal stem cells and supporting their survival, growth and function.

That discovery has opened a different line of thinking about treatment. Rather than simply inhibiting complement activity, Dr. Kulkarni and her team want to understand whether restoring balance within the system could help reduce inflammation and support healing.

“We believe that restoring the imbalance, rather than purely inhibiting these pathways, is likely to maintain gut health,” she said

Using human specimens, animal models and advanced technologies, the team will investigate how locally produced complement proteins help the intestinal lining respond to injury, repair itself and fight pathogens. The long-term goal is to inform new therapeutic approaches for people with refractory inflammatory bowel disease.

The New Innovator Award gives the laboratory an opportunity to pursue questions that can be difficult to explore through conventional funding mechanisms. Just as importantly, Dr. Kulkarni sees the award as an investment in the people who will help answer them. The support will provide opportunities for trainees and graduate students to expand their research, while bringing together collaborators across UCLA and creating new opportunities to partner with clinicians.

“We are excited to work with the different teams that make UCLA unique, including collaborators in the Goodman-Luskin Microbiome Center, the Broad Stem Cell Research Center, the Center for Nutrition and the Departments of Medicine, Pathology, and Microbiology, Immunology and Molecular Genetics,” she said. “Bringing together these different areas of expertise allows us to address complex questions in a truly interdisciplinary way.”

For Dr. Kulkarni, that collective effort helps move an intriguing scientific observation toward something larger: understanding whether local complement activity can eventually be harnessed to treat mucosal inflammation.

And sometimes, moving science forward means looking closely at something that does not behave the way researchers expect.

Gregory Donaldson, PhD: When an Antibody Breaks the Rules

Antibodies are generally associated with helping the body eliminate microorganisms. Immunoglobulin A, or IgA, complicates that familiar story.

In the gut, IgA can help certain beneficial bacteria establish themselves and can also signal to epithelial cells lining the intestine. Those unconventional behaviors have made the antibody particularly intriguing to Dr. Donaldson, assistant professor of medicine, and microbiology, immunology, and molecular genetics in the UCLA Division of Digestive Diseases. “IgA has been historically neglected in research because it is really bad at doing what we think antibodies are supposed to do,” Dr. Donaldson explained. “But I think this is actually exciting, because it means IgA does different things.” His laboratory wants to understand those differences.

The team will investigate how IgA responses begin, how they influence the microbiome, and how interactions among bacteria and intestinal cells change during infection and disease. By developing and combining several research approaches, the laboratory hopes to uncover new molecular signals that help explain how the immune system and microbiome work together to maintain intestinal health. The work is foundational, but Dr. Donaldson sees possibilities ahead. A deeper understanding of IgA-microbiome interactions could eventually point toward strategies that reinforce a healthy microbiome to prevent disease, including gastrointestinal tumors. Getting there, however, may require following paths that do not always lead where expected.

The New Innovator Award allows the laboratory to propose new approaches, including methods the team is still developing. That freedom to experiment is part of what Dr. Donaldson finds particularly valuable, especially for members of his lab.

“Not all of these will work out, but having some failures along the way is necessary to really do something new.”

It is a candid description of discovery. Innovation does not always begin with knowing the answer. Sometimes, it begins with having the freedom to ask a different question and seeing where it leads.

Tomas Ganz, MD, PhD: Research Journey Leads to First-of-Its-Kind Therapy

I next salute one of our senior faculty, Tomas Ganz MD, PhD, distinguished research professor of medicine and pathology (emeritus) in the UCLA Division of Pulmonology, who continues to advance new knowledge in a critical area of medicine and biology.

Rusfertide mimics the activity of hepcidin and can control hematocrit without causing severe iron deficiency, while avoiding many of the side effects associated with phlebotomy. Because treatment is often lifelong, reducing the symptom burden can make an important difference in patients’ life.

The path to this milestone began in the late 1990s, when Dr. Ganz’s laboratory discovered hepcidin while studying another class of biologically active peptides. After Elizabeta Nemeth, PhD joined the laboratory in 2001, the team shifted its focus to hepcidin and iron homeostasis. Her expertise and increased focus on iron accelerated the research.

Under Dr. Ganz’s leadership, the laboratory spent the following decade investigating how hepcidin works, how it is regulated and what role it plays in the body. The team demonstrated that synthetic hepcidin could dramatically lower blood iron levels in mice, studied its interaction with the iron exporter ferroportin and synthesized more than 100 first-generation hepcidin peptide agonists. Graduate students, postdoctoral scholars and other laboratory members contributed throughout this scientific journey.

Further evolution of this work in the commercial sector led to Rusfertide as an improved, second-generation hepcidin agonist. Dr. Ganz describes the continued efforts as an example of a company building on knowledge produced at UCLA and other academic institutions to benefit patients. Each discovery created a foundation for the next, gradually transforming a newly identified hormone into the basis for an entirely new class of therapies. For Dr. Ganz, seeing this science reach patients is especially gratifying.

“Without the staff, trainees and junior faculty in our lab, none of this could have happened,” he adds. The research benefited from discoveries by other laboratories, sustained support from several NIH institutes, UCLA leadership and a worldwide community of scientists studying the biomedical roles of iron.

“We run a very friendly and collegial lab and take time to celebrate our successes, be it papers, grants or clinical applications,” Dr. Ganz said.

The approval of rusfertide offers an extraordinary reason to celebrate. It reflects Dr. Ganz’s sustained scientific leadership and willingness to pursue high-risk, high-reward research, as well as the dedication of the many colleagues who helped move a foundational discovery toward a treatment for patients. With other hepcidin-related therapies still in development, the team hopes there will be much more to celebrate in the future.

Michael Yashar, MD: Turning a New Idea into a New Model for Patient Care

Our vision to lead in innovation, transform care and advance health for all is reflected not only in scientific discovery, but also in efforts to rethink how patients receive care. For Michael Yashar, MD, FACEP, associate medical director of UCLA Health Westwood Immediate Care, an urgent challenge in the emergency department became an opportunity to build a new path forward.

Evidence-based clinical pathways guide patient selection and treatment, while services such as outpatient IV therapies, remote cardiac monitoring, home oxygen and expedited diagnostic procedures help address needs that might otherwise require hospitalization. Building that model across a complex health system required more than one good idea. It required bringing together people with different perspectives, responsibilities and expertise.

“Having an impact of such scale has very much been a team and collaborative effort,” Dr. Yashar said. “It requires appreciating the needs, concerns and capabilities of multiple stakeholders across many disciplines and specialties.”

The Next Day Clinic has continued to evolve since its launch. Its pathways have expanded, and the model now includes referrals for some hospitalized patients who have started improving but remain in the emergency department awaiting beds. The program has also recently begun piloting ambulatory referrals for certain conditions, which has allowed these patients to receive appropriate and timely care without visiting the emergency department.

The team is also exploring additional eligible conditions and ways to broaden access to the program. Through September 2026, the Next Day Clinic had received 597 referrals, helped avoid an estimated 2,627 hospital bed-days and represented approximately $7.7 million in avoided expenditures.

By creating a closely coordinated outpatient option for appropriate patients, the program helps preserve inpatient capacity while also strengthening continuity of care. For Dr. Yashar, the continuous development of the program has meant remaining open to learning. Processes do not always unfold as expected, he noted, and improving the clinic has required the team to approach challenges with curiosity rather than judgment.

That experience has reinforced his belief that meaningful change begins with a shared purpose. Addressing multifaceted problems such as emergency department boarding and hospital length of stay requires the knowledge and commitment of many people working toward a common vision centered on patient needs.

His advice for colleagues who see an opportunity to improve care is to begin by clearly identifying the problem, learning what is already being done and speaking with people who understand the issue from different perspectives. He also encourages colleagues to surround themselves with experienced mentors.

“Once you get those conversations going, the wheels invariably start moving in the right direction,” Dr. Yashar said.

The Next Day Clinic demonstrates what can happen when innovation is treated not as a single breakthrough, but as a collaborative process of listening, testing and improving. The award celebrates Dr. Yashar’s leadership in moving that process forward, as well as the many colleagues who helped transform an ambitious idea into better care for patients.

Now Accepting Applications: DoM Community Engagement and Inclusive Excellence Innovation Awards

The achievements celebrated throughout this newsletter began with people who recognized an opportunity to make a difference and took the first step. Across the UCLA Department of Medicine, faculty, staff and trainees continue to find practical ways to remove barriers, strengthen community partnerships and improve the experiences of patients, learners and colleagues.

The DoM Community Engagement and Inclusive Excellence Innovation Awards help move promising ideas into action by providing up to $2,000 in seed funding for projects focused on community engagement, inclusive excellence, wellness, education, quality improvement and health equity. Applications are accepted on a rolling basis. Faculty may apply directly, while trainees and professional staff are encouraged to partner with a department of medicine faculty member.

Award-supported projects have translated chronic pain self-care videos into Cantonese and Mandarin, developed LGBTQ+ educational initiatives, expanded outreach related to Alzheimer’s disease and healthy aging, and addressed health literacy, medication safety and care delivery in safety-net settings. Recipients are also encouraged to share their work through presentations, publications and the annual DoM for LA Summit, helping successful programs inspire future collaboration.

Whether the goal is to remove a barrier, improve care, enrich education or strengthen a community partnership, meaningful change often begins with someone willing to act on an idea. These awards provide support to help move that idea forward. Learn more today by contacting Cynthia Joseph at CJJoseph@mednet.ucla.edu.

Additional Pilot Funding Opportunities

Finally, in our Friday Research Newsletter we announced two additional pilot funding programs. The first, intends to support innovative ideas that use AI to improve health and health care for older adults living with dementia and the second provides pilot support for global health projects.

Keep on innovating everybody. Our future depends on it!

Dale

P.S.

In thinking about bookends, I started my 12-mile run on Saturday morning fairly early, so that I could catch the bookend that initiated the day. The sunrise over the LA basin and the San Fernando Valley was spectacular.

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