Panetta Announces National Institute of General Medical Sciences Grant Awarded to University of California, Santa Cruz

SALINAS, CA – Today, Congressman Jimmy Panetta (D-Calif.) announced that the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC) received a federal grant totaling $377,776 per year for five years from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences to study T cell signaling.

"We are fortunate to have a cancer research center at the University of California, Santa Cruz that keeps growing and innovating," said Congressman Panetta. "This federal investment will help UCSC continue to develop medical applications that will not only benefit the Central Coast, but our entire country."

"Our research addresses a fundamental process used by our immune T cells to recognize virus-infected cells and developing tumors in the body," said Professor Nikolaos Sgourakis, a professor in the Chemistry and Biochemistry Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz. "We will employ a new technology combining Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) spectroscopy (done at our new $2.5M UCSC NMR facility), with powerful computational methods to provide insight into the first critical steps of T cell activation at the molecular level. Besides obtaining an unprecedented basic science understanding of this fundamental biological process, the knowledge gained from our detailed molecular description will enable us to develop new therapeutic molecules for emerging immunotherapy applications to combat viral infections, and cancer."