News & Events

Valerie Weaver, Ph.D., Professor of Surgery in the Departments of Surgery, Anatomy, and Bioengineering & Therapeutics Sciences, and Director of the Center for Bioengineering & Tissue Regeneration, is the recipient of a National Cancer Institute (NCI) Outstanding Investigator Award (OIA) (R35), supporting a 7-year $6.7M grant for Dr. Weaver's project entitled, "Tissue mechanics reprograms the tissue to malignancy and metastasis." This NCI Outstanding Investigator Award provides long-term support to experienced investigators with outstanding records of research productivity and [...]

Congratulations to Guanqing Ou and coauthors on their publication in Integrative Biology! Abstract: The mechanical properties of the extracellular matrix influence cell signaling to regulate key cellular processes, including differentiation, apoptosis, and transformation. Understanding the molecular mechanisms underlying mechanotransduction is contingent upon our ability to visualize the effect of altered matrix properties on the nanoscale organization of proteins involved in this signalling. The development of super-resolution imaging techniques has afforded researchers unprecedented [...]

"The stiffening of breast tissue in breast-cancer development points to a new way to distinguish a type of breast cancer with a poor prognosis from a related, but often less deadly type, UC San Francisco researchers have found in a new study. The findings, published online March 16 in Nature Medicine, may lead eventually to new treatment focused not only on molecular targets within cancerous cells, but also on mechanical properties of surrounding tissue, the researchers said.In a mouse model of breast cancer, scientists led by Valerie Weaver, PhD, professor of surgery and anatomy and director [...]

The UCSF Center for Bioengineering and Tissue Regeneration, led by Valerie Weaver, PhD, Professor of Surgery, moves into newly renovated lab space. This new, fully equipped lab facility provides an ideal environment for UCSF researchers to carry out the center's initiative to better understand cancer and therefore improve prognoses for cancer patients. View the Lab Website

Valerie Weaver and collaborators have identified the first positive regulator of BRCA1, establishing that the loss of the homeobox gene HoxA9 promotes tumor growth in breasts. The scientists found that restoring HoxA9 in breast cancer cells inhibited their malignant behavior in culture and in vivo. Intriguingly, the researchers learned that while HoxA9 has been shown to promote leukemia, it actually functions as a tumor suppressor in the breast. This eight-year project was led by Valerie M. Weaver, PhD, a faculty member in the Department of Surgery, "The finding demonstrates what we've seen [...]

Weaver and colleagues showed that collagen crosslinking drives tumor progression. The report established a correlation between collagen crosslinking and extracellular matrix (ECM) stiffness in mouse models and implicates the ECM-crosslinking enzyme lysyl oxidase (LOX) as a culprit driving stiffness-associated tumor progression. This article has been highlighted in the journals Cancer Cell and in Nature.

The National Institutes of Health awarded Valerie Weaver, PhD, Director of the UCSF Center for Bioengineering and Tissue Regeneration and her colleagues a grant for the establishment of a virtual Physical Sciences - Oncology Center for the development of novel approaches to cancer diagnostics, prognosis and therapy.  The collaboration is led by Dr. Weaver, and Jan Liphardt, PhD, a world-renowned physicist at the UC Berkeley. The group encompasses the disciplines of physics, bioengineering and bioinformatics, and clinical and biological sciences spanning leading institutions including: UCSF [...]