The UCSF Alpha Clinic draws on UCSF’s strong culture of collaboration. We leverage existing infrastructure to strengthen partnerships to accelerate cell and gene therapy trials.
The UCSF Alpha Clinic employs scaled infrastructure capable of activating and rapidly enrolling patients into cell-based clinical trials. We engage clinical sites at Parnassus Medical Center, Benioff Children’s Hospitals in Oakland and San Francisco, Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center, and regional affiliates such as the Community Cancer Institute in Clovis, Caif.
This broad participation and collaboration emphasize UCSF's commitment to building essential regional partnerships that advance cutting-edge fundamental clinical research and extend access to underrepresented minority groups in our communities. Our research partner work includes the following:
UCSF Living Therapeutics
The expansion of novel cell and gene therapies at UCSF is facilitated in part by new infrastructure investment intended to establish and expand investigator-initiated cell and gene therapy early phase trials under IND by UCSF investigators. The Living Therapeutics Initiative (LTI) is designed to propel the development of living therapeutics and bring them quickly to patients.
UCSF Alpha Clinic contributes to this effort by delivering supportive infrastructure in clinical trial development that begins as early as the pre-clinical phase with the INTERACT meeting, defining with investigators the necessary IND-enabling pre-clinical studies, culminating in an Investigational New Drug (IND) supported early phase clinical trial. The goal is for the UCSF Alpha Clinic to facilitate the launch of a pipeline of early-phase clinical trials in collaboration with the LTI.
Innovative Genomics Institute (IGI) at the University of California, Berkeley (UCB)
To broaden the scope of therapeutic gene editing in hereditary disorders, we have expanded our collaboration with the Innovative Genomics Institute (IGI) at UC Berkeley in clinical translation of CRISPR technology to precision medicine-guided targeting of selected hereditary disorders. If successful in these early clinical trials, we envision the application of this method of gene therapy more broadly, such as in rare disorders of the nervous system, of the blood, and cancer.
This collaboration is best exemplified by the lead clinical trial of CRISPR modification of autologous hematopoietic stem progenitor cells for correction of the sickle mutation, which is an active clinical trial under IND, supported by a CLIN2 and matching NHLBI Cure Sickle Cell Initiative funding, brought to the clinic through a disease-team collaboration of teams from UCSF, IGI, and UCLA.
Community Cancer Institute
The UCSF Alpha Clinic is actively expanding its support of the UCSF Fresno Hematology/Oncology Division and its hospitals in multiple areas, including education, training, implementation of a transplantation program, and increasing the number and range of clinical research studies suitable for participation. This collaboration with Community Cancer Institute on the Clovis Community Medical Center aims to lower access to clinical trial participation, particularly by underserved groups.