Research

The Samueli Center is committed to research, education and clinical care. This tripartate mission mutually reinforces each area of our activity. For example, we train students, postdoctoral scholars from the US and China and clinical practitioners in our laboratories. Likewise, our research helps guide our clinical protocols and gives us an opportunity to train integrative practitioners in cutting edge techniques that can be used to improve their clinical outcomes. Feed back from our courses, clinicians and our patients helps guide our research protocols by giving us practical direction.

The center has a number of basic and more clinically applied research protocols. Although clinical application is certainly of much interest and importance in furthering our understanding of the clinical value of the many and varied integrative medical practices, the center has concentrated on providing a fundamental or mechanistic understanding in several areas. As with many centers, we have concentrated our research in a few areas so that we can add meaningfully to the literature. This approach is highly prized by the western or allopathic medical community, and increasingly is being embraced by integrative medical practitioners, in part because it allows an evidence based approach to care and, in part, because it answers the fundamental questions of how these therapies work, how can they be optimized and is their influence more than simply placebo, questions that constantly are raised by mainstream scientists and clinicians in all societies.

The major area of emphasis is the broad area of traditional Chinese or Oriental medicine. This includes studies of acupuncture, herbals, Qi Gong and Tai Chi, among others.

The following is a partial listing of areas of current research concentration in the Samueli Center, a list that is constantly changing and being updated.

1. Acupuncture and electroacupuncture neurobiological influence on the cardiovascular system and blood pressure.
2. Natural products in clinical chemoprevention and chemotherapy, mitochondrial antioxidant protection and neural-immune enhancement.
3. Herbal longevity properties.
4. Fundamental neurobiology of stress.
5. Healing touch intervention.
6. Dietary and exercise approaches to aging and dementia.
7. Neural and cardiovascular influences of Qi Gong.
8. Higher brain function in meditation.
9. CAM in health care delivery

Research in the Samueli Center is supported by a combination of federal and local grants as well as endowment and philanthropic sources of seed funding.

Faculty investigators who currently are either directly or indirectly associated with the center include:

1. Tallie Z. Baram, PhD, MD
2. Carl Cotman, PhD
3. Liang Wu Fu, MD, PhD
4. Sheldon Greenfield, MD
5. Zhi-Ling Guo, MD, PhD
6. Randall F. Holcombe, MD
7. Mahtab Jafari, PharmD
8. Peng Li, MD
9. Shin Lin, PhD
10. John Longhurst, MD, PhD
11. Frank Meyskens, MD
12. Dwight M. Nance, PhD
13. Ralph E. Purdy, PhD
14. Stephanie Tjen-A-Looi, PhD
15. Douglas Wallace, PhD
16. Roger Walsh, PhD
17. Xiaolin Zi, MD, PhD

Please contact individual investigators to find out more about their integrative medicine research program.

Current Research Projects