News

Diabetes tops the list of preventable conditions and risk factors associated with heart attack and stroke in Qatar, according to a study appearing in the inaugural issue of the Journal of Local and Global Health Perspectives.

Weill Cornell Medical College in Qatar's (WCMC-Q) health campaign Sahtak Awalan: Your Health First has launched a new mobile phone app that helps users maintain a healthy diet and encourages them to exercise as well. The app is called Your Health First: Calorie Counter.

Awards, honors, prizes and achievements for the week of March 8 - March 15.

Weill Cornell Medical College and its faculty practice, the Weill Cornell Physician Organization, today celebrated the opening of a new medical practice at 2315 Broadway at West 84th Street. The comprehensive practice expands access to Weill Cornell's world-class physicians on Manhattan's West Side and offers imaging, primary care and the most in-demand specialty services to children and adults — all under one roof.

Today, U.S. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) and U.S. Rep. Chris Gibson (R-N.Y.), in partnership with the Tick-Borne Disease Alliance (TBDA), a national nonprofit organization dedicated to raising awareness and promoting advocacy to find a cure for Lyme and other tick-borne diseases, hosted a forum at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York City to discuss the fight against the silent epidemic of tick-borne diseases, including Lyme disease. A satellite forum was held at SUNY Ulster, and the event was streamed live at tbdalliance.org and weill.cornell.edu/tickborne/.

Weill Cornell Medical College has been awarded more than $1.9 million by the National Institute of Mental Health of the National Institutes of Health to lead an innovative research study using advanced neuroimaging and clinical evaluations of patients with chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS). The new four-year clinical study, to be conducted in collaboration with Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and Beth Israel Medical Center, will aim to expand the scientific understanding of CFS, improve diagnostics for the condition and discover novel biomarkers, all of which may lead to the identification of new and more effective treatment targets.

Approximately 400,000 foreign-born survivors of persecution and torture live in the United States, struggling to receive asylum. Addressing the complex challenges faced by these asylum seekers requires collaboration and resource-sharing across the human rights community. With that goal in mind, the Weill Cornell Center for Human Rights (WCCHR) will host the first annual New York Asylum Network Luncheon from 12:00 to 3:00 p.m. Saturday, March 9 at Weill Cornell Medical College's Weill Greenberg Center, 1305 York Ave. This innovative forum will bring together activists, professionals and students to develop vital solutions to the common challenges faced by persons seeking asylum in the U.S.

The powerful master regulatory transcription factor called Bcl6 is key to the survival of a majority of aggressive lymphomas, which arise from the B-cells of the immune system. The protein has long been considered too complex to target with a drug since it is also crucial to the healthy functioning of many immune cells in the body, not just B cells gone bad.

Awards, honors, prizes and achievements for the week of Feb. 22 - March 1.

A research team at Weill Cornell Medical College has solved the 3D crystal structure of a member protein in one of the most important classes of human proteins -- the G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs). These types of proteins latch on to and transmit chemical signals from outside the cell to the inside, and half of all drugs on the market today work by ether inhibiting or activating GPCRs.

Biomedical research at Weill Cornell Medical College, as well as at other academic medical centers across the nation, will be devastated if Congress doesn't stop the looming across-the-board spending cuts set to take effect this Friday. That was the message imparted during a press conference on Sunday by U.S. Rep. Carolyn Maloney and hosted by Weill Cornell Medical College and Dr. Laurie H. Glimcher, dean of Weill Cornell.

Sleep-related problems are among the most common issues seen by a pediatrician, and for good reason -- poor sleep habits can lead to behavioral, educational, social and health problems. Fortunately for parents, many childhood sleep problems can be recognized early and treated successfully.

University at Albany and Weill Cornell Medical College researchers discuss proposed changes in HIV-Testing guidelines by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) in a perspective article in the March 7 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine. Authors Erika G. Martin, assistant professor of public administration and policy at UAlbany's Rockefeller College and fellow at the Rockefeller Institute of Government, and Dr. Bruce R. Schackman, associate professor of public health and chief of the Division of Health Policy at Weill Cornell, address the broad impact the changes will have on the health care of HIV-infected patients.

Dr. Lewis Cantley, a leading cancer researcher credited with discovering a family of enzymes fundamental to understanding cancer, was named a winner of the inaugural Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences, the world's richest academic prize for medicine and biology. The prize, which carries a $3 million cash award, recognizes excellence in research aimed at curing intractable diseases and human life.

The AstraZeneca HealthCare Foundation Connections for Cardiovascular Health program today announced a grant of $181,895 to Weill Cornell Medical College in support of the Weill Cornell Heart-to-Heart Community Outreach Campaign.

Awards, honors, prizes and achievements for the week of Feb. 15 - Feb. 22.

Physicians at Weill Cornell Medical College and biomedical engineers at Cornell University have succeeded in building a facsimile of a living human ear that looks and acts like a natural ear. Researchers believe their bioengineering method will finally succeed in the long quest by scientists and physicians to provide normal looking "new" ears to thousands of children born with a congenital ear deformity.

Dr. Laurie H. Glimcher, dean of Weill Cornell Medical College, speaks with Dr. Mark Rubin, a renowned researcher who has just been appointed director of the newly established Institute for Precision Medicine. Dr. Rubin is going to lead efforts to provide optimal, targeted, individualized treatments that are based on a patient's own genetic profile. He says the Institute for Precision Medicine could potentially give hope to cancer patients who have failed traditional therapies, as well as look into little known cancers.

Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons and Weill Cornell Medical College have announced that the Mortimer D. Sackler, M.D. Prize for Distinguished Achievement in Developmental Psychobiology has been awarded to Carla Shatz, PhD, the Sapp Family Provostial Professor in Neurobiology at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California. Dr. Shatz's work has advanced understanding of fundamental principles of early brain development with the discovery that neuronal activity prior to birth is essential for later formation and refinement of connections in the visual system. Her work has important implications for understanding how the visual system refines its connections—work that has contributed to our understanding of critical periods of brain wiring in developmental disorders such as autism and schizophrenia.

An anti-copper drug compound that disables the ability of bone marrow cells from setting up a "home" in organs to receive and nurture migrating cancer tumor cells has shown surprising benefit in one of the most difficult-to-treat forms of cancer — high-risk triple-negative breast cancer.