Get the latest news delivered daily!
David Crotty
The Gand Band will perform its Beatles tribute show as a fundraiser for the La Jolla Historical Society.
Elisabeth Frausto
The bells at St. James by-the-Sea Episcopal Church ring out at noon.
Rotary Club of La Jolla
The recipients of this year”s Rotary Club of La Jolla scholarships.
A Beatles-themed fundraiser for the La Jolla Historical Society is planned for Thursday, July 18, featuring the La Jolla-based Gand Band.
The concert, celebrating the 60th anniversary of the Beatles coming to America, will feature songs by the Fab Four with videos on two screens behind the band.
The show has been performed to sold-out audiences three times in Palm Springs.
The La Jolla Historical Society will receive a portion of the proceeds to help fund its Modernism Home Tour coming up Saturday, Oct. 5.
The concert will begin at 5 p.m. July 18 at The Living Room, 1205 Prospect St., La Jolla. Tickets are $45. Learn more at thegandband.com.
Second-graders at La Jolla’s Stella Maris Academy raised $1,148 for the Rainforest Alliance during a campus event May 29.
The children invited students and their families to explore a mock rainforest they created and answered questions about the rainforest based on a series of school lessons leading up to the event. Students also created a store selling foods and recycled items.
“We are so proud of the results we had this year,” said teacher Michelle Campagna. “Each year we raise money to donate to the Rainforest Alliance to help provide services to protect our planet’s rainforests and their inhabitants.”
The Rotary Club of La Jolla awarded $245,500 to 11 high school students and 32 reapplicants from four local high schools during a luncheon at the La Valencia Hotel in La Jolla on June 4.
The 2024 recipients are La Jolla High School students Arin Berger, Nooriya Baxamusa, Eden Choi-Fitzpatrick, Elena Tyvoll, Hannah Davidson and Skye Velez; Preuss School students Lia Le and Vy Thai; The Bishop’s School student Mia Bravo; and La Jolla Country Day School students Devan Mehrish and Christina Doupsas.
The club provides two types of scholarships to students from those four schools. One takes into account academic achievement, scholarship and community service. The other is restricted to students attending a California college or university and majoring in a STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) field.
For more information about the program, visit rotarycluboflajolla.org/page/scholarships.
The 92nd annual white elephant sale at St. James by-the-Sea Episcopal Church in La Jolla will feature new and gently used items donated for resale, with proceeds going to area nonprofits.
Donations are being accepted for the Aug. 23-24 event and can be dropped off at the St. James Parish Hall on the corner of Eads Avenue and Silverado Street from 9 to 11:30 a.m. every Sunday leading up to the sale.
The church is seeking clean, new or nearly new clothing, accessories, jewelry, antiques, art, housewares, children’s items, holiday decor and outdoor equipment.
The annual Christmas Bazaar will again be combined with the white elephant sale, offering an entire department dedicated to holiday items.
The church is at 743 Prospect St. Learn more at sjbts.org.
The Windansea Surf Club is accepting submissions through Sunday, June 16, for the 2024 Menehune Art Contest open to people 18 and younger.
Artists may submit up to three pieces for consideration. Entrants do not need to be club members.
The winner will receive $150, and his or her art will be featured on all promotional material for the Menehune Surf Contest, including the poster, program and T-shirt.
Cash prizes also will be awarded to the second- and third-place finishers.
Learn more at windanseasurfclub.org.
Bacteria, parasites, viruses — the immune system tackles them all.
Now, researchers at the La Jolla-based Salk Institute for Biological Studies say they have discovered a molecular mechanism that helps macrophages (human immune response cells) mount a coordinated response tailored to a specific immune challenge. The study was published June 5 in Immunity.
“Macrophages are our first line of defense and the recruiters for adaptive immune cells, so understanding how they work is key to understanding our immune response,” said Diana Hargreaves, the study’s senior author and an associate professor at Salk. “If we can figure out how macrophages tailor their responses to a given immune signal, we’ll have a better idea of how we can therapeutically target them to create desirable immune system behaviors.”
Activating macrophages requires the work of three versions of a protein complex called SWI/SNF: cBAF, ncBAF and PBAF. Scientists already knew these variants had slightly different structures, but the new findings reveal that these differences have real functional consequences. Salk researchers reported that discovered each variant plays a distinct role in initiating macrophages’ responses to intruders and, consequently, how the immune system regulates inflammation.
The study revealed new immune system mechanisms that could be targeted with therapeutics to regulate inflammation associated with conditions such as sepsis, cytokine storm, COVID-19 and more, researchers said.
UC San Diego is officially the first hospital system in the region to offer a new immunotherapy treatment for metastatic melanoma. The personalized cellular therapy derived from tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes, or TIL, is the first solid-tumor therapy on the market approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
“This one-time cellular immunotherapy is a powerful and robust tool to treat patients with advanced melanoma resistant to other approved therapies and who have limited treatment options,” said Dr. Gregory Daniels, a professor in the UCSD Department of Medicine.
Skin cancer is the most common form of cancer in the United States, with melanoma accounting for nearly 1 percent of skin cancers but causing the most skin cancer deaths, according to the American Cancer Society.
The process of TIL therapy begins by collecting and isolating a patient’s unique cancer-fighting white blood cells, called lymphocytes, or T-cells, from the surgically removed tumor. The T-cells are isolated, expanded and stimulated to enhance their ability to recognize, infiltrate and attack cancer cells. The army of TIL cells is then infused back into the patient.
Some children with autism experience profound, lifelong difficulties such as developmental delay, social struggles and even the inability to speak. Others experience more mild symptoms that improve with time.
The disparity in outcomes has been a mystery to scientists, but a new study published in Molecular Autism by researchers at UC San Diego in La Jolla is the first to shed light on the matter. Among its conclusions: The biological basis for the two subtypes of autism develops in utero.
Researchers used blood-based stem cells from 10 children ages 1-4 with idiopathic autism (in which no single-gene cause was identified) to create brain cortical organoids (BCOs), or models of the fetal cortex. They also created BCOs from six neurotypical toddlers.
Among their findings: The BCOs of children with autism were significantly larger — roughly 40 percent — than those of neurotypical controls, according to two rounds of study performed in 2021 and 2022. Each round involved the creation of hundreds of organoids from each patient.
The researchers also found that abnormal BCO growth in children with autism correlated with its severity. The larger a child’s BCO size, the more severe the social and language symptoms were later in life and the larger the brain structure on MRI. Children with excessively enlarged BCOs showed greater-than-typical volume in social, language and sensory brain areas when compared with neurotypical peers.
Now that researchers have established that brain overgrowth begins in the womb, they say they hope to pinpoint its cause in a bid to develop a therapy that might ease intellectual and social functioning for those with the condition.
Researchers at UC San Diego are issuing a warning about products making health claims connected to “magic mushrooms.”
In a paper published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, the scientists suggest that the growing market for Amanita muscaria may be sparked in part by emerging clinical research supporting the safety and efficacy of psilocybin as a treatment for depression.
Like psilocybin mushrooms, Amanita muscaria mushrooms have psychotropic effects, including a feeling of weightlessness, visual and auditory hypersensitivity, space distortion, unawareness of time and colored hallucinations. The psychotropic effects are produced by compounds that naturally occur in the mushroom called muscimol and ibotenic acid, its biosynthetic precursor.
However, in addition to being psychotropic, those compounds can be more toxic than fentanyl, cocaine and PCP, according to the scientists’ review of estimates from published mouse studies. Nevertheless, gummies and chocolates containing the compounds are being marketed with health-related claims such as mitigation of anxiety, depression and other conditions.
The authors’ key takeaway is that “companies who are making these products are pushing the limits of our regulations. They are getting away with making a buck until someone tells them they can’t. Given the substantial risks associated with using Amanita muscaria products, it is a buyer-beware marketplace where consumers are at risk and are not accurately informed. The time for a public health first response is now.”
— Compiled by La Jolla Light staff ◆
Copyright © 2024 MediaNews Group
