News | Page 26 | Graduate School of Medical Sciences

Dr. Matthew Greenblatt. Credit: John Abbott

Dr. Matthew Greenblatt Wins Pershing Square Sohn Prize for Young Investigators in Cancer Research

Dr. Matthew Greenblatt, an assistant professor of pathology and laboratory medicine at Weill Cornell Medicine, has been awarded the 2019 Pershing Square Sohn Prize for Young Investigators in Cancer Research to support his work studying tumor growth in bone.

Established in 2013, the prize is awarded each year to New York-based scientists pursuing compelling cancer research and provides $200,000 in funding annually for up to three years. The Pershing Square Sohn Cancer...

Dr. Rajiv Ratan (center) and his research team at the Burke Neurological Institute.

A New Strategy for Protecting the Brain After Strokes

The chemical element selenium, an essential nutrient for humans and other animals, protects the brain after a stroke and may be a basis for future stroke therapies, according to a study from scientists at Burke Neurological Institute and Weill Cornell Medicine.

The study, published in print on May 16 and online May 2 in Cell, found that selenium drives a molecular response in brain cells that protects them from a cell-killing process arising in the hours after stroke. Delivering a...

Tracking the Epigenetic Evolution of a Cancer, Cell by Cell

A powerful new set of scientific tools developed by Weill Cornell Medicine and New York Genome Center (NYGC) researchers enables them to track the molecular evolution of cancers. The tools should enable a better understanding of how cancers arise and spread in the body, and how they respond to different therapies.

Described in papers on May 15 in Nature and April 23 in Nature Communications, the new approach allows researchers to isolate individual cancer cells sampled from patients...

Helping Hand

Dr. Omar Vandal, Ph.D. ’07, came to Weill Cornell Graduate School of Medical Sciences determined to make a difference in the world—focusing his studies on tuberculosis, the world’s most deadly infectious disease and one that sickens an estimated half-million people each year in his homeland of Pakistan. He did innovative doctoral research, identifying a key protein that the TB bacterium needs to survive within the host cell—information that may help scientists develop better drugs. But after...

Discovery Reveals Potential New Pathway for Treating Obesity and Related Disorders

A molecule that helps prevent fat accumulation in mammals is produced within fat tissues by stem-like cells that may be therapeutic targets for obesity and related disorders, according to a new study from scientists at Weill Cornell Medicine.

Obesity has become a global pandemic in recent decades, and presently affects more than 90 million Americans and hundreds of millions of people worldwide. Obesity can be debilitating on its own, but it also increases the risk of other major...

Study Shows How Ketamine Reverses Depression—and How its Benefits Could Be Extended

The powerful but temporary benefits of ketamine against depression might be extended if the new brain-cell connections it promotes could be preserved, according to a new study published April 12 in Science from researchers at Weill Cornell Medicine.

Depression affects tens of millions of people in the United States alone, which could lead to suicide in severe cases, and ketamine is the only widely-tested antidepressant drug that relieves depression symptoms within hours of taking it—as...

Astronaut Twins Study Yields New Insights, Algorithms and Portable DNA Sequencing Tools

Long-term spaceflight causes more changes to gene expression than shorter trips, especially to the immune system and DNA repair systems, according to research by Weill Cornell Medicine and NASA investigators as part of NASA’s Twins Study, which followed the only set of identical twin astronauts for more than two years.

Dr. Christopher Mason, an associate professor of physiology and biophysics at Weill Cornell Medicine, led one of 10 teams of scientists chosen by NASA to compare...

Smart Money

As a student in immunology and microbial pathogenesis at the Weill Cornell Graduate School of Medical Sciences, Dr. Ting Jia published eight papers in top journals, including four as first author. Working with Dr. Eric Pamer—a member of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, where he serves as head of the Division of Subspecialty Medicine and the Enid A. Haupt Chair in Clinical Investigation—Dr. Jia explored how immune cells and signaling proteins migrate from bone marrow to points of...

Anemia Drug Shows Promise for Treating Leukemias

By Jim Stallard

Acute myeloid leukemia (AML) is one of the most common blood cancers in adults. The disease is difficult to treat with chemotherapy and usually proves fatal. However, researchers have identified a potential chink in the armor: AML cells have a greatly reduced ability to export iron compared with normal blood cells, leaving them at risk for iron induced death.

Now, researchers at Weill Cornell Medicine and the Sloan Kettering Institute have found a way to exploit this...

Carl Nathan accepts an Exemplary Achievement Award from Joan and Sanford Weill and Augustine Choi

Acclaimed Immunologist Carl Nathan Awarded Joan and Sanford I. Weill Exemplary Achievement Award

Video of Weill Cornell Medicine Honors Dr. Carl Nathan

Dr. Carl Nathan, chairman of the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at Weill Cornell Medicine, has been awarded the institution’s Joan and Sanford I. Weill Exemplary Achievement Award.

The Weill Award was established in 2018 to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the medical college’s renaming in honor of Weill Cornell Medicine’s foremost benefactors, Joan and Sanford I. Weill. The Weill Award recognizes...