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Winter 2025

It is my pleasure to share the many ways in which our team serves our patients and our community and deliver discoveries that improve the lives of patients all over the world. We are innovating ways to understand and treat of diseases of the head and neck, offering over 25 active clinical trials, receiving over $5M in annual external grant  funding in 2024.  None of this would be possible without our extraordinary trainees who you will see highlighted below, in collaboration with our extraordinary faculty mentors. It is our commitment to provide the 

absolute best clinical care, and train the leaders who will continue our journey to serve our local communities and patients across the world.  We are excited to share this journey with you.

Joseph A. Califano III, MD

Interim Chair, Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery

Professor and Iris and Matthew Strauss Chancellor’s Endowed Chair in Head and Neck Surgery

Director, Hanna and Mark Gleiberman Head and Neck Cancer Center, Moores Cancer Center

Benjamin Ostrander, MD was awarded the ANS Herbert Silverstein Award for Research Excellence in Otology/Neurotology for his work entitled “Whole Genome Sequencing of Sporadic Vestibular Schwannoma Identifies Novel Molecular Pathways.” This research, supported by his mentor Rick Friedman, MD, PhD, has revealed novel genes and differential protein expression that may be implicated in the pathogenesis of hearing loss and tumor growth. Dr. Ostrander will be giving a podium presentation at COSM this spring summarizing these results.

Dr. Farhoud Faraji, senior resident, published a first author manuscript entitled “YAP-driven malignant reprogramming of oral epithelial stem cells at single cell resolution” in Nature Communications from the laboratory of senior author Dr. Silvio Gutkind, with Dr. Joseph Califano as a coauthor. This study sheds light on the crucial first step of cancer development: how normal oral stem cells transform into cancer stem cells and give rise to oral cancer. Our team at the UCSD Moores Cancer Center uncovered that a signaling molecule, YAP, when with human papilloma virus (HPV) oncogenes, triggers a cascade of changes in 

normal stem cells leading to the progressive initiation of head and neck carcinoma. Using cell tracing, single cell technology, and multi-omics approaches, they discovered the cellular and molecular alterations needed to reprogram a normal cell into a cancer cell: oncogenic signaling leading to rapid growth, loss of normal cellular identity, and recruitment of myeloid immune cells that override immune elimination and support tumor invasion. Importantly, this study identifies YAP activation as a molecular switch that transforms HPV-infected cells into head and neck cancer, and reveals a new vulnerability that can be targeted to treat HPV-related head and neck cancer .

Tammie Warren’s birthday wish came true when she traveled from North Carolina to UC San Diego Health for surgery to preserve her hearing.

In collaboration with the U.S. Navy and Navy Medical Center San Diego, The Matsuoka lab is investigating the role of physical motion in Mal de Débarquement Syndrome (MdDS) using an inertial measurement unit (IMU) to capture the ship’s linear and angular acceleration, along with geomagnetic field data. This information is correlated with various neuropsychological questionnaires to identify specific motion patterns that may contribute to MdDS. The goal is to leverage this data to develop effective countermeasures and inform the design of a new device to mitigate symptoms. This project has received funding from the MdDS Foundation, the Academy of Clinician Scholars (AOCS) at UC San Diego Health, and Navy Medical Center San Diego.

Dr. Theresa Guo’s Academic Senate Pilot grant ($15,000) is focused on better understanding the biology of oral cancers that arise in young patients. While a majority of oral cancers are diagnosed in smokers over age 60, a growing number of oral cancers is being diagnosed in patients under age 50, even without risk factors.  A preliminary investigation shows that these young patients demonstrate a unique tumor microenvironment with T-cell exclusion within tumors that may drive poor prognosis and poor response to novel immunotherapies.  The proposed work will perform multiplex high resolution immunohistochemistry to compare oral cancer from older smokers compared to young patients to elucidate the potential drivers of this immune exclusion to develop improved treatments for these young patients with oral cancer.

Cisplatin is one of the most widely used group of cytotoxic drugs worldwide, treating many adult- and pediatric-onset cancers. Nearly 40% of common childhood malignant tumors rely on cisplatin chemotherapy for cure exposing ~2,000 children in the United States to cisplatin each year. These agents can cause severe hearing loss. Cisplatin crosses the blood-labyrinth barrier leading to damage to the sensory cells of the cochlea, the organ of hearing. This results in severe, progressive, and permanent hearing loss in ~75% of cisplatin-treated children and ~80% of young adults with testicular cancer. Dr. Friedman and collaborators from CalTech have identified a small molecule that, in preliminary studies, demonstrates near complete protection against the ototoxic effects of cisplatin. This research is being funded by a $500,000 grant from Curebound

Erin Walsh, in collaboration with Professor James Friend from the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, developed an affordable instrumented pacifier designed to detect abnormal swallowing in in healthy term newborns. This innovation aims to replace the current subjective methods of assessing newborn sucking competency, which rely on a gloved finger, visual inspection scales, infant weight gain patterns, and maternal reports of latch comfort. The device provides real-time data output and leverages machine learning to reveal subtle sucking nuances that would otherwise go undetected. The fabrication and clinical application of the device for detecting swallowing and sucking issues in  tongue-tied newborns were published in Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Journal of Translational Engineering in Health and Medicine (PMID: 36619906; PMID: 38765888). In November 2024, Walsh received an Accelerating Innovations to Market grant to support a large-scale, multisite study aimed at further refining the machine learning model and capturing lower-incidence disorders. Simultaneously, they are pursuing FDA clearance for eventual commercialization. One of the primary cited reasons for breastfeeding abandonment in the first month relates to latch and suckling dysfunction - precisely the challenge this device seeks to address.

Dr. Allen Ryan and Dr. Kurabi have discovered peptides that can cross the intact round window membrane, effectively carrying large cargo (1 µm). Currently, they are assessing the ability of these peptides to noninvasively transport substantial drug packages into the inner ear. For their middle ear studies, they generate transcriptomes of individual cells during otitis media using scRNA-Seq, which helps identify potentially druggable processes that mediate pathogenesis at the cellular level. Additionally, they assess changes in genomic DNA accessibility to transcription factors through single-nuclear ATAC to gain a better understanding of how different cell types regulate genes during a middle ear infection.

Dr. Krish Suresh was awarded the American Neurotology Society Trainee Award for his study titled, “Automated Segmentation of Bilateral Vestibular Schwannoma”. The study reports the development of a deep learning model to measure tumor volumes in patients with neurofibromatosis 2. Dr. Suresh performed this work while at Mass Eye and Ear, and is developing further imaging analysis models at UCSD under the mentorship of Dr. Rick Friedman and Dr. Marc Schwartz