Professor dies of stroke at age 69
George Soloman, a psychoneuroimmunologist and psychiatry
professor emeritus, died Oct. 7 from a stroke at the age of 69.
Soloman forged new ground in patient treatment in suggesting
that the state of mind can influence the body’s immune
system. His focus on this made him one of the founders of the
psychoneuroimmunology field, which studies how the body’s
physical well-being is related to mental well-being.
“When Dr. Soloman began his work, the idea that a healthy
mind might help fight cancer was largely dismissed by the medical
establishment,” said Peter Whybrow, director of the
Neuropsychiatric Institute and chair of the Department of
Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences.
Soloman grew up in Freeport, New York and received both his
bachelor’s degree and M.D. from Stanford University.
He served in the U.S. Army from 1959-1961 as a captain and chief
of the Mental Hygiene Consultation Service at Fort McClellan,
Alabama.
Soloman became a professor in residence at NPI in 1984 and
served as an adjunct professor at UC San Francisco.
He lectured across the globe and earned honors such as Fellow of
the Royal College of Psychiatrists and President of the
Psychoneuroimmunology Research Society.
Last year, UCLA established the Soloman Chair in Psychobiology
at NPI in his honor.
Protein found to regulate tumors
Researchers at UCLA have discovered that a protein that occurs
naturally in the human body can keep cancerous tumors from growing,
the Jonsson Cancer Center reported Monday.
The discovery could lead to new ways to treat cancer, said Luisa
Iruela-Arispe, a Jonsson Center molecular biologist.
The center found that Thrombospondin-1, or TSP-1, regulates the
tumors’ ability to form an independent blood supply, which
they need to grow.
“We all have cancers that occur within us, but the body
throws up a lot of obstacles to keep the cancers from
growing,” Iruela-Arispe said in a statement. “TSP-1 is
likely to be one of those obstacles.”
During their research, Iruela-Arispe and her team studied a
group of mice with breast cancer. The mice that had higher, or
overexpressed, levels of TSP-1, developed smaller tumors that took
longer to grow than a group of mice that had no TSP-1 expressed at
all, the statement from the Jonsson Center said.
Hospital gives Oct. 31 advice
The UCLA Mattel Children’s Hospital is all for Halloween
fun, but reminds parents that safety comes first.
After the Sept. 11 attacks, anxiety may leave some more prone to
misinterpret pranks as threats, said Edward McCabe,
physician-in-chief of the hospital.
“The nature of Halloween may feel different this year
since everything has changed and we must all be more
sensitive,” he said. “Some people may still feel
anxious from the horrors of Sept. 11.”
David Feinberg, a child psychiatrist at UCLA, says celebrating
Halloween helps people feel they’ve regained normalcy.
“Of course, certain costumes like those of a firefighter
or soldier take on a whole new meaning,” he said.
“Parents should talk with their children about what they want
to wear and why.”
Pacific waves bigger, stronger
New research presents evidence that waves in the North Pacific
Ocean, particularly in Southern California, have increased in size
and intensity over the past half century as a result of stronger
wind and storm activity.
The findings also suggest that ocean swells impacting Southern
California have rotated from more northwesterly directions to more
westerly directions, resulting in more direct effects on the
coast.
“Winter storms have been getting stronger and the storm
track has been shifting southward,” said Nick Graham of
Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of
California, San Diego.
Reports from Daily Bruin wire services.