UC San Diego loses a third star scientist in mini brain drain

For the third time since March, a competing institution has hired one of University of California San Diego’s world-renowned scientists, extending the mini “brain drain” that’s a common phenomenon at elite research institutions.

Michael Karin has moved his lab to the nearby Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute, where he will serve as director of the Center for Metabolic and Liver Diseases.

Karin, 74, is widely known for his insights about how chronic inflammation contributes to cancer as well as metabolic disorders, including alcoholic fatty liver disease. His work has helped researchers develop anti-inflammatory drugs.

The biochemist, who spent nearly 40 years at UCSD, has transferred 18 of his lab members to Sanford Burnham Prebys, along with roughly $2.2 million a year in grant money.

Karin’s departure follows that of Anders Dale, a neuroscientist who left UCSD in April to become director of J. Craig Venter Institute in La Jolla. Dale has long been a leader in the study of the brains of children and adolescents.

A short time earlier, UCSD lost Bing Ren, a widely-cited geneticist, to Columbia University in New York, where he is now scientific director and CEO of the New York Genome Center. He specializes in how the human genome affects neuro-degeneration and cancer.