News

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

Dr. Lisa Giulino Roth and Dr. Lorena Fontan each receive the Post Doctoral Fellowship Award from the Lymphoma Research Foundation and additional awards, honors, prizes and achievements for the week of Feb. 1 - Feb. 8.

A unique collaboration between physical scientists at Weill Cornell Medical College and Cornell University in a National Cancer Institute initiative has yielded promising advances in cancer research that may offer new hope in the War on Cancer. Three years ago, the National Cancer Institute established 12 Physical Science-Oncology Centers (PS-OCs) comprised of "trans-disciplinary scientific teams" to "examine new, non-traditional approaches to cancer research." Cornell University and Weill Cornell Medical College applied and were selected as one of 12 charter centers.

A team of researchers at Weill Cornell Medical College has discovered that amyloid peptides are harmful to the blood vessels that supply the brain with blood in Alzheimer's disease — thus accelerating cognitive decline by limiting oxygen-rich blood and nutrients. In their animal studies, the investigators reveal how amyloid-? accumulates in blood vessels and how such accumulation and damage might be ultimately prevented.

On Friday, Feb. 1, Sanford I. Weill, chairman of the Board of Overseers of Weill Cornell Medical College, announced that the school had reached its goal of raising $1.3 billion, thus completing the highly ambitious [I]Discoveries that Make a Difference Campaign[/I]. The announcement was made at the Medical College in the presence of Cornell University's Board of Trustees, including Chairman Robert Harrison and President Dr. David Skorton, along with the Weill Cornell Medical College Board of Overseers.

Cancer research teams from Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, The Rockefeller University and Weill Cornell Medical College, the New York City based members of the Starr Cancer Consortium (SCC), are winners of $5 million in grant awards from The Starr Foundation's Sixth Starr Cancer Consortium Grant Competition to fund five novel cancer research projects.

Dr. Edward Craig received lifetime achievement award for his prevention, control and cure of arthritis and additional awards, honors, prizes and achievements for the week of Jan. 25 - Feb. 1.

Weill Cornell Medical College and NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital launched the new Joint Clinical Trials Office at NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center and Weill Cornell Medical College in January, assembling all of the clinical trial activities under the auspices of one structure.

Recognizing that medicine is not "one size fits all," Weill Cornell Medical College and NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital have created the pioneering Institute for Precision Medicine at Weill Cornell and NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center. This new, cutting-edge translational medicine research hub will explore the new frontier of precision medicine, offering optimal targeted, individualized treatment based on each patient's genetic profile. The institute's new genomic research discoveries will help develop novel, personalized medical therapies to be tested in innovative clinical trials, while also building a comprehensive biobank to improve research and patient care.

Alzheimer's disease is one of today's most devastating afflictions, but according to Weill Cornell Medical College researchers, there is reason to have hope. That was the message conveyed at the inaugural Appel Alzheimer's Disease Research Institute Symposium, hosted at Weill Cornell and sponsored by the Helen and Robert Appel Alzheimer's Disease Research Institute. The symposium brought together researchers and clinicians from diverse areas of research with the goal of better understanding the disease.

The annual Cornell Alumni Leadership Conference, hosted by the Cornell University Office of Alumni Affairs Jan. 18-20 in Boston, Mass., brought together alumni volunteers from classes, affinity and diversity groups, regional and international clubs, and other organizations to participate in training, share best practices, develop strategic programming and network.

Dean Laurie Glimcher speaks with Dr. Ash Tewari, the Ronald P. Lynch Professor of Urologic Oncology at Weill Cornell and director of the LeFrak Center for Robotic Surgery who is now the founding director of the new Center for Prostate Cancer.

A team of researchers led by Weill Cornell Medical College is calling into question the published statistics, methods and findings of a highly publicized research study that claimed bedside electroencephalography (EEG) identified evidence of awareness in three patients diagnosed to be in a vegetative state.

A research study of more than 600 black patients with uncontrolled hypertension found that less than half were prescribed a diuretic drug with proven benefit that costs just pennies a day, report researchers at Weill Cornell Medical College and the Visiting Nurse Service of New York's (VNSNY) Center for Home Care Policy and Research. The researchers say these new findings should be taken as a serious wake-up call for physicians who treat black patients with hypertension.

Qatar's citizens, from the youngest to the oldest, currently have the chance to help try to create the world's biggest painting in an event organized by Weill Cornell Medical College in Qatar.

Dr. Barbara Milrod receives an award for innovation in psychoanalysis and additional awards, honors, prizes and achievements for the week of Jan. 11 - Jan. 18.

Health care providers and hospitals are being offered up to $27 billion in federal financial incentives to use electronic health records (EHRs) in ways that demonstrably improve the quality of care. The incentives are based, in part, on the ability to electronically report clinical quality measures. By 2014, providers nationwide will be expected to document and report care electronically, and by 2015, they will face financial penalties if they don't meaningfully use EHRs.

Scientists at Weill Cornell Medical College have discovered the molecular switch that allows aggressive triple negative breast cancer cells to grow the amoeba-like protrusions they need to crawl away from a primary tumor and metastasize throughout the body. Their findings, published in Cancer Cell, suggest a novel approach for developing agents to treat cancer once it has spread.

Replacing the combination of brand-name, antiretroviral drugs currently recommended for control of HIV infection with soon-to-be-available generic medications could save the U.S. health care system almost $1 billion a year but may diminish the effectiveness of HIV treatment. A study led by Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and Weill Cornell Medical College investigators, appearing in the January 15 Annals of Internal Medicine, examines the potential impact of such a change.

Despite major advances in high-throughput screening and genomic technologies, tuberculosis (TB) drug development remains hindered by a general inability to measure the effective penetration of chemical compounds into Mycobacterium tuberculosis bacteria (Mtb) which cause TB. To address this gap, the Tres Cantos Open Lab Foundation has awarded Weill Cornell Medical College funding to support a visiting Weill Cornell microbiologist's two-year research project at the Tres Cantos Open Lab in Spain to measure and analyze the permeability of chemical compounds into Mtb using novel metabolomics technology.