The trial is evaluating the investigational CARLEN System, a transcatheter device designed to support the heart’s natural mitral valve without permanently altering its structure. Unlike other transcatheter mitral valve repair procedures, this device aims to preserve the valve’s anatomy while improving function.

UC Davis Medical Center is the only hospital in Northern California participating in the trial and currently offering eligible patients access to this investigational treatment option. 

“We are honored to be the first U.S. hospital participating in this clinical trial and to play a role in advancing this innovative treatment option for patients,” said Gagan Singh, director of the Structural Heart Program at UC Davis Health. “Making this possible for our patient took a large team working behind the scenes for months.”

“I learned how to work with mice and do a bunch of experiments, and I really liked it,” Clarke said of her undergraduate experience at UC Davis.

After graduating with a degree in neurobiology, physiology and behavior, she took a job conducting research at UCSF, and four years later got into the UC Davis School of Medicine. She’s now in the ARC-MD pathway program, short for Academic Research Careers for Medical Doctors. Clarke, who recently completed her third year of medical school, has been named the 2026 recipient of the Daniel T. O’Connor, M.D. Memorial Research Grant (DTOC).

The prestigious grant, named for a 1974 alumnus, is given annually to a research-minded medical student who embodies O’Connor’s values: High-quality research in translational medicine, through a multi-disciplinary, highly collaborative, “bench to bedside” approach. After graduating from the UC Davis School of Medicine, O’Connor became a distinguished professor of medicine and pharmacology at UC San Diego. He was internationally known and published more than 400 journal articles before his death in 2014.

His widow Kellie Evans-O’Connor helps administer the DTOC award. The grant provides a stipend and health insurance for an academic year.

An ‘exceptional student’ with a promising future

“Maria is an exceptional student physician-scientist whose accomplishments, professionalism, drive and clear vision for a career in translational research distinguish her from her peers,” said Jennifer Rosenthal, the UC Davis School of Medicine’s executive director of research, training and development.

The award seemed perfectly timed for Clarke.

Medical students who aspire to be physician-scientists usually step aside from the classroom and conduct unpaid research for at least a year. Clarke was about to complete her third year of medical school and anxious about entering a research year she couldn’t afford.

Researchers at UC Davis Health and Kaiser Permanente have helped fill this knowledge gap by tracking a large group of 90+ year-olds since 2018 — the LifeAfter90 study. Their most recent findings, which were published in The Lancet Healthy Longevity, delineate dementia risk disparities between genders and racial and ethnic groups. The study also revealed how older brains respond to genetic variables.

“We know from other studies, done in people 65 and older, that there are differences in dementia rates, and women tend to have higher risk, but nobody knew if that was true after 90,” said Rachel Whitmer, UC Davis Health professor of public health sciences and neurology, chief of epidemiology and senior author on the study. “We need to understand who is most affected by dementia after 90 and how the main Alzheimer's risk gene (APOE) factors in.”

LifeAfter90

LifeAfter90 participants are Kaiser Permanente members, 90 or older, who enrolled before they had any signs of dementia. Led by Whitmer, researchers have closely followed these patients, examining them every six months to track their cognitive health.

Because participants are long-term Kaiser Permanente members, the LifeAfter90 team has access to decades of health information, in some cases dating back to the 1960s. The Lancet study examined medical records from over 800 participants, median age 92. This is the first effort to investigate dementia after 90 in a highly diverse cohort.

The researchers found that, like their younger counterparts, women 90 and older are at higher risk for dementia — two-fold greater than men. There were also racial and ethnic risk disparities, similar to those of younger groups. Black participants had a 75% greater risk than Asian participants.

“It is striking that the racial and ethnic disparities in dementia risk observed in younger adults continue into the tenth decade of life,” said Hilary Colbeth, a UC Davis postdoctoral scholar in public health sciences and first author on the paper. “Specifically, Black and Hispanic participants had significantly higher dementia incidence rates than white and Asian participants.”

Researchers examined how four lifestyle factors — sleep quality, screen time, physical activity and diet — influenced the relationship between mental health symptoms and academic and social functioning in children ages 10 to 13. They found that sleep was the strongest factor associated with better grades and fewer social problems. Screen time was the second strongest factor.

"This finding surprised us," said Jason Smucny, the study's first author and a computational neuroscientist in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences. "We expected sleep to be important, but we didn't expect it to stand out so clearly above other lifestyle factors, particularly screen time.”

The biotherapeutic metabolite, 10-hydroxystearic acid (10-HSA), is produced by the beneficial gut bacterium Lactiplantibacillus plantarum. L. plantarum is a common lactic acid bacterium found in many over-the-counter probiotics and fermented foods. It also occurs naturally in the human gut.

The findings were published in Nature Microbiology.

"Current HIV therapies are remarkably effective at controlling viral replication, but they do not fully repair the profound damage HIV causes in the gut," said Satya Dandekar, senior author of the study and a distinguished professor in the Department of Medical Microbiology and Immunology at UC Davis Health. "Our findings suggest that restoring the gut's structural and immune health can enhance antiretroviral treatment and opens an entirely new avenue for achieving more durable control of HIV.”

HIV and the late stage of the infection, AIDS, remain major global public health issues. In 2025, an estimated 40.9 million people were living with HIV, and approximately 1.2 million people acquired new HIV infections. In 2025, around 570,000 people died from AIDS-related illnesses worldwide.

HIV damages gut immune system

Gut-associated lymphoid tissue, the body’s largest immune tissue and key regulator of the body's immune system, is an early target of HIV. The virus severely damages the immune and epithelial cells in the gut’s lining. This damage leads to an inflamed, leaky gut, a weakened defense system and decreased nutrient absorption. The virus also disrupts mitochondrial function (mitochondria are organelles that generate energy within the cells). 

Even with strict adherence to ART, many people living with HIV have persistent gut inflammation caused by the virus. Previous research from Dandekar’s lab showed L. plantarum could quickly heal the chronically inflamed leaky gut associated with HIV.

For this study, the researchers identified metabolites produced by L. plantarum in the virally inflamed gut environment in the non-human primate model of HIV/AIDS. Among the hundreds of molecules created by L. plantarum, one metabolite, 10-HSA, emerged as the strongest candidate for repairing the gut barrier and reducing inflammation.

Using X-ray crystallography to visualize 10-HSA interactions at the atomic level, researchers demonstrated that 10-HSA directly binds to PPAR-alpha, a nuclear receptor that regulates key biological processes.

This binding promoted histone crotonylation, an epigenetic modification that helps regulate gene activity. The resulting cascade of cellular events reprogrammed gene expression to restore mitochondrial function and energy metabolism while supporting repair of the gut lining.

Researchers also found that 10-HSA increased mitochondrial respiration of gut epithelial cells during HIV inflammatory conditions, boosting energy-generating capacity and reducing harmful reactive oxygen species.

Testing the approach in nonhuman primates

To determine whether the benefits of 10-HSA translate to living organisms, the team conducted two independent studies at the UC Davis National Biomedical Research Institute in non-human primates infected with simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV), a close relative of HIV.

• The first study evaluated 10-HSA alone without ART. This led to intestinal repair, improved key markers of gut function, improved mitochondrial health, reduced inflammatory signaling and partially restored the gut microbiota.

• The second study evaluated 10-HSA in combination with ART. Significantly, the combined treatment showed faster clearance of viral burden than ART alone. The combination also promoted faster recovery of gut immune cells, reduced immune activation, restored epithelial barrier integrity and restored beneficial gut microbiota and microbial diversity.

“The findings suggest repairing the tissue damage caused by HIV may be as important as suppressing the virus itself with antiretroviral therapy,” said Dylan Kramer, first author of the study and recent Ph.D. graduate from the Dandekar Lab. “By rebuilding the gut barrier, restoring mitochondrial function and reducing inflammation, 10-HSA helps create conditions that support stronger immune recovery and more effective antiviral therapy for HIV.”

The authors caution that the results are from preclinical models. The studies showed no adverse effects. The research supports testing the safety and effectiveness of 10-HSA in humans.

"Our research shows that host health, microbial health and viral control are deeply interconnected," Dandekar said. She noted that treating the damaged gut ecosystem facilitates recovery of the immune system, leading to regained functions that have been lost during HIV infection. Additionally, treating the damaged gut during HIV infection can improve outcomes beyond what antiviral drugs can achieve alone.

“The restoration of gut barrier integrity and microbial balance through 10-HSA supplementation may represent a promising therapeutic strategy, with implications that extend beyond HIV to other chronic inflammatory diseases of the gastrointestinal tract,” Dandekar said.

A full list of authors appears in the journal article.

This research was supported by funding from the National Institutes of Health (U42OD010990, AI123105, R37 AI 153025, T32 AI060555, P51 OD011107, R01 ES036174) and the UC Davis School of Medicine.

The University of California has filed a patent application related to therapeutic treatment strategies involving 10-HSA.

Resources

Read the study in Nature Microbiology

Mapping the pathway to gut health in HIV and SIV infections

The study, published in The Lancet, found that patients who received deramiocel experienced significantly slower disease progression compared with those receiving a placebo, demonstrating benefits across multiple measures of muscle and cardiac function.

Duchenne muscular dystrophy affects approximately 1 in 3,500 to 5,000 boys worldwide and progressively weakens skeletal, respiratory and cardiac muscles. While advances in care have improved survival, there remains a critical need for therapies to address multiple aspects of the disease, particularly in non-ambulatory patients with advanced disease.

In the HOPE-3 study, 106 participants with advanced DMD were randomized to receive quarterly infusions of deramiocel or placebo over 12 months. Patients treated with deramiocel showed significantly less decline in upper limb function, a critical measure of independence that affects activities such as feeding, grooming and using technology. The treatment also demonstrated advantages on measures of cardiac function and disease-related heart scarring, two major causes of illness and premature death in DMD.

“What makes these findings especially meaningful is that deramiocel demonstrated effects across multiple systems impacted by Duchenne muscular dystrophy,” said Craig McDonald, chair of the Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation at UC Davis Health and lead study investigator. “Preserving arm and hand function is critically important for maintaining independence and quality of life in people living with Duchenne. At the same time, protecting heart function is essential for long-term health. Seeing evidence of the benefit in both areas is a game changer and represents a potentially important advance for patients and families.”

A different approach to treating Duchenne

Unlike therapies that target a specific genetic mutation, deramiocel is designed to address disease processes common to many people with DMD — including inflammation and fibrosis, or scarring — that progressively damages muscles and the heart.

The therapy consists of cardiosphere-derived cells, which are obtained from donated human heart tissue and act through biological signaling mechanisms that help reduce fibrosis and modulate harmful inflammation.

The oral medication was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 2024 to treat anemia caused by chronic kidney disease in adults. The drug is currently approved for once-daily use.

The new trial evaluated the safety of administering it three times a week rather than daily, aligning treatment with a typical patient’s dialysis clinic visits.

“Offering patients a treatment that aligns with their regularly scheduled dialysis sessions ensures adherence and reduces the burden of managing yet another medication at home,” said Shuchi Anand, a kidney specialist and professor in the Department of Internal Medicine at UC Davis Health.

Anand served on the executive steering committee for the clinical trial, helping to design the study, oversee its implementation and evaluate its outcomes.

Need for new treatment options

Many patients on dialysis develop anemia because damaged kidneys produce less erythropoietin (EPO), the hormone that stimulates red blood cell production. Frequent blood draws and iron loss during dialysis sessions can further lower blood counts. 

Treatment typically includes iron supplementation, EPO-stimulating injections and, more recently, oral medications to help reduce fatigue and prevent complications associated with low red blood cell levels.

“The goal of this trial was to broaden the range of treatment options available to patients,” said Anand. “We haven't seen a new anemia therapy for people on dialysis in more than two decades. That makes it especially important to develop safe and effective alternatives.”

The UC Davis-led study of more than 500 older Vietnamese Americans captured the scope of war, displacement and immigration trauma that occurred in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s. The findings suggest resilience may help soften the long-term mental health effects of war-related trauma, offering insight that could inform healthier aging strategies for other trauma-exposed communities.

Now, new research further examines how the trauma, resilience and other life experiences interact to affect brain health and aging.

“We know that adversity and hardship are a part of life, and this is especially true for Vietnamese Americans who have faced war,” said Oanh Meyer, senior author and leader of a pioneering Vietnamese American cognitive aging study. “We want to know how these experiences affect later life cognitive and mental health.”

Meyer is part of UC Davis Health’sDepartment of Neurology and research faculty with the Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center. She also leads the landmark study, known as Vietnamese Insights into Cognitive Aging Program, or VIP. Funded by the National Institute on Aging, the effort examines how life experiences, resilience and cultural factors shape cognitive aging and dementia risk.

The new study is titled, “Aging and resilience in Vietnamese American older adults: Evidence from the Vietnamese Insights into Cognitive Aging Program.” Researchers examined whether resilience may help protect mental health later in life among older Vietnamese Americans who experienced early adversity and war-related trauma.

“If we can understand what contributes to resilience or protects against depression in later life, this could have implications for brain health,” Meyer explained.

The findings may have broader implications for aging research. As dementia rates rise, scientists are looking beyond genetics to understand how experiences across the lifespan — from education and stress to trauma, social support and mental health — influence cognitive aging.

When resilience becomes protective

In interviews for the earlier study, participants described fleeing danger, enduring hunger, living through imprisonment and being separated from loved ones. Yet alongside those memories, many spoke about faith, family, gratitude and the ability to adapt.

The newer, 2026 study, published in International Psychogeriatrics, analyzed data from 511 Vietnamese American adults aged 65 and older who are part of VIP. Researchers examined depression symptoms, stress and global cognition, a measure of overall thinking and memory.

The study, “Aesthetic Surgery Complications in Private Practice Settings: Insights to Optimize Patient Access and Outcomes,” examined patients who visited UC Davis Medical Center between 2020 and 2023 with complications following cosmetic procedures performed at other facilities. Researchers evaluated patient demographics, complication patterns, healthcare utilization and the financial impact on patients, insurers and healthcare systems.

Among the study's key findings:

• Patients with reported complications were disproportionately Black, Hispanic and Medicaid-insured compared with the overall emergency department population.
• Nearly half of procedures had been performed outside traditional United States surgical settings, most commonly in Mexico and the Dominican Republic.
• Tobacco and cannabis use were associated with significantly higher rates of infection and a greater likelihood of requiring additional intervention.
• Complications generated substantial healthcare costs for government sponsored insurance programs. The median hospital charge for patients being treated for the complications exceeded $43,000 per person and surpassed $125,000 among those who ultimately required a new surgery.

These findings highlight the often-overlooked downstream costs associated with aesthetic surgery complications and the burden they place on patients, healthcare systems and public payors.

The study noted that patients with lower incomes may be more likely to seek low-cost procedures without adequate consideration of surgeon qualifications, facility accreditation, or complication risks.

“As demand for aesthetic surgery continues to grow, ensuring that patients have access to safe, high-quality care is increasingly important,” said co-author Scott Levin, chief resident in Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery at UC Davis Health. “Our findings suggest that complications from cosmetic procedures disproportionately affect vulnerable patient populations, creating challenges not only for patients themselves but also for the healthcare systems that care for them. Improving access to safe aesthetic care is ultimately both a patient safety and health equity priority.”

Lead author Nina Yu noted that the findings underscore the importance of understanding the social and economic factors that influence patient decision-making and postoperative outcomes.

“Our study highlights that complications from aesthetic surgery extend beyond the operating room,” Yu said. “Improving patient education, optimizing preoperative risk assessment and expanding access to qualified providers may help reduce preventable complications and improve outcomes for patients.”

The researchers conclude that interventions focused on patient education, risk stratification, access to qualified surgeons and health equity may help reduce complications while alleviating financial burdens on patients and healthcare systems alike.

Granger B. Wong, chief of the Division of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery at UC Davis Health was also a co-author of the study.

The research, published in Neuropsychology, assessed real-time mood and cognition in normal, everyday settings.

“Our goal is to understand how people perceive their cognition, or ability to think, and how that compares with how they actually perform using objective test measures,” said UC Davis Health neuropsychologist Sarah Tomaszewski Farias, senior author on the paper. Tomaszewski Farias is a professor in the Department of Neurology, director of the UC Davis California Alzheimer’s Center of Excellence and the clinical core leader of the National Institutes of Health-funded UC Davis Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center.

“We found that people’s moment-to-moment impressions of their cognitive abilities were closely aligned with their actual performance. This could help lead to possible earlier detection of cognitive decline and Alzheimer’s risk than standard cognitive testing,” she said.

Using smartwatches to prompt real-time cognitive assessments

The study followed 162 older adults, with an average age of around 72. They all had concerns about memory or cognitive changes but scored within normal limits on standard cognitive tests prior to the study.

For one week, the participants received prompts on an Apple Watch four times a day. Each time, they rated their mental sharpness and their mood — such as how stressed, fatigued or depressed they felt. They also completed brief cognitive tasks to measure processing speed and attention directly through the Apple Watch.

Unlike standard testing, which often relies on people recalling how they have felt over weeks or months, this approach captured cognition in real time. It’s a method known as ecological momentary assessment.

“Usually, in a clinic or a research setting, we have people do tests and ask them to retrospectively say how much they have problems with their memory. A lot of times, their test results and how they perceive their memory problem aren't correlated,” Tomaszewski Farias explained.

In this study, researchers measured both subjective mental sharpness and objective cognitive performance during regular, daily life.

“When the participants were performing cognitive tests and rating their mental sharpness, it was happening throughout their day — whether they were doing chores at home or out shopping. We were capturing their cognition in real time, rather than having them come into a clinic where it's very quiet and in a very artificial contrived environment,” Tomaszewski Farias said.

The researchers looked at how closely the participants’ ratings of mental sharpness corresponded to their objective performance. They also checked whether the mood ratings interfered with their ability to accurately perceive their level of sharpness.

The SUPPORT II Pivotal Study is assessing the investigational Supira System, a low-profile percutaneous ventricular assist device (pVAD) that provides temporary hemodynamic support during high-risk percutaneous coronary intervention.

The trial will enroll up to 385 patients across as many as 40 sites in the United States to evaluate the safety and effectiveness of the system. Patients are randomized to the investigational pVAD system or a larger commercially available pVAD system.

“We are excited to participate in this clinical trial and contribute to advancing care for some of our highest-risk cardiovascular patients,” said Garrett Wong, clinical professor of cardiovascular medicine and co-principal investigator of the study. “This trial enables us to offer a procedure to patients who would otherwise be considered too high risk.”

What is a pVAD system?

Cardiologists use pVADs during stent placement or angioplasty procedures to support blood flow for high-risk patients with severe coronary artery disease or comorbidities. 

Additionally, pVADs are used to treat patients suffering from cardiogenic shock, a condition that can occur following a severe heart attack. The condition is linked to a high rate of morbidity as a patient’s heart is suddenly too weak to adequately pump blood to vital organs.

The device in this clinical trial is smaller than current devices. The system includes multiple sensors to collect real-time aortic and ventricular pressures and help guide clinical management.

“Achieving high flow rates has traditionally required larger devices, which can present challenges with both vascular access and positioning,” said Tai Pham, assistant professor of cardiovascular medicine and co-principal investigator of the study. “This investigational system’s low-profile design aims to reduce the risk of vascular complications associated with larger commercial devices while still providing full hemodynamic support during high-risk coronary interventions.”

The funding comes from the NIH’s Clinical and Translational Science Awards (CTSA) program. The initiative speeds up the process of turning basic scientific discoveries into tangible clinical treatments, diagnostics and preventive interventions that improve public health.

UC Davis Health is one of more than 60 leading medical institutions across the nation to receive a CTSA award, and has received continuous funding since 2006, when it was one of the 12 original program hubs.

“This award recognizes nearly two decades of building a system that moves promising ideas out of the lab and into clinical care,” said Ted Wun, the director and contact principal investigator (PI) of the award. Wun is also the chief of hematology and oncology at UC Davis Health and serves as a co-principal investigator of the California Cancer Reporting and Epidemiologic Surveillance program.

 “Our goal is simple but not easy: Train and help researchers, clinicians and communities work together to develop and deliver better treatments faster,” Wun added.

With the renewal, UC Davis will expand its efforts in several key areas, including:

• Increasing access to clinical trials at UC Davis Health
• Enhancing training programs and career development to fill critical gaps in the research workforce
• Strengthening community partnerships
• Developing new tools and approaches to speed the translation of research innovations into practice