Founder of the Bank of America, A.P. Giannini left a legacy not only of banking for the everyday man, but also of medical research.

As a carrier of hemophilia, a rare inherited bleeding disorder that killed his two sons, Giannini in 1945 established the A.P. Giannini Foundation to serve humanity through research aimed at alleviating medical suffering.

Since 1951 the foundation has awarded more than 560 Medical Research Fellowships and a total of $12 million to postdoctoral researchers at California's eight accredited medical schools. One-third of those awards, or approximately $4 million, have gone to researchers at UCSF.

Six to eight new fellowships are awarded each year. The total fellowship stipend is $121,000 over three years, which provides support early in a scientist's career and allows young researchers to pursue their own scientific interests.

Here's a look at two UCSF postdoctoral fellows who received A.P. Giannini Foundation awards for their research. Although the foundation makes awards for research in all fields of medicine, both of these fellows work in pulmonary medicine.

1960 – Jay Nadel, MD

When Jay Nadel arrived at UCSF in 1958 as the first fellow of the newly formed Cardiovascular Research Institute, he thought he would study cardiology. However, CVRI Director Julius Comroe, MD, cultivated Nadel not as a cardiologist, but as a pulmonologist.

"There were few, if any, pulmonary divisions in the United States, maybe in the world, at that time," says Nadel. In 1960 he was awarded an A.P. Giannini Foundation fellowship of $7,500 to research air pollutants such as sulfur dioxide, which triggers asthma attacks. But what the fellowship really did was allow Nadel to pioneer the field of pulmonary medicine.

He became president of the American Thoracic Society and successfully lobbied Congress to rename the National Heart Institute the National Heart and Lung Institute. He also lobbied the NIH for five-year grants to young pulmonary investigators. Nadel says, "Those awards were the ways that departments of medicine throughout the country brought in new people and developed lung divisions." At UCSF, he was named chief of the Pulmonary Division in 1968, a role he held for over 30 years.

Since 1977 he has been director of the UCSF NIH Multidisciplinary Pulmonary Research Training Program. A great many pulmonary academicians worldwide have trained under his leadership, including approximately 140 in his own laboratory. In appreciation of his accomplishments, the University of Paris this year presented him with the René Descartes Medal. He continues research fulltime.

What keeps him at UCSF after almost 50 years? "I adore the place," he says. "When I arrived we were something like the 85th best medical school in the United States. Within a few years, we were in the top five in the country and the world. That's why I stayed."

2007 – Kaman Chan, PhD

Tuberculosis can live in a human for decades without making the person ill. It only reveals itself when the person's immune system becomes significantly compromised.

"What is really unknown is how the pathogen is able to establish such a long-term infection and what it's doing within the host over that period of time. Is it just hanging out there, or is it actually doing something to trick the human immune response?" asks researcher Kaman Chan. As an A.P. Giannini Foundation fellow at UCSF, she hopes to find the answers.

"It's important to any post-doc's future to get some sort of fellowship or funding on her own," says Chan, "to figure out a way to express ideas in a manner that's going to be appealing to a funding agency."

The A.P. Giannini Foundation requires candidates to be nominated by their own medical schools. It makes awards to fellows in conjunction with a named principal investigator or mentor. And unlike most organizations that award fellowships based only upon paper applications, the A.P. Giannini Foundation uses a Medical Advisory Committee and makes awards based in part upon personal interviews.

For her future, Chan hopes for a career in academia. "I've always been lucky to have really great mentors," she says. "I'd love to have a laboratory in which I can extend that same mentorship and guidance to other scientists down the road."

To learn more about establishing research fellowships at UCSF, contact Caitlin Croughan at 415/502-8327 or ccroughan@support.ucsf.edu.