Dr. Ari Melnick

Awards, honors and achievements for the month of March.

Weill Cornell Medicine has received a five-year, $12.4 million grant from the National Cancer Institute, part of the National Institutes of Health, for an extensive program of basic and translational research on the biology of diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL), the most common form of lymphoma.

Molecular and physiological changes in space travelers reveal new targets for aerospace medicine and can guide new missions, according to the results of a massive international research endeavor by investigators at Weill Cornell Medicine, SpaceX, and other organizations.

Weill Cornell Medicine faculty members and alumni were honored with awards for their exemplary achievements in research, education and patient care during the institution’s commencement activities on May 15 and 16.

A team led by researchers at Weill Cornell Medicine has identified important drivers of the transformation of a type of blood cancer called follicular lymphoma from a slow-growing form to the aggressive form it takes in some patients.

Two new grants from The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society (LLS) will support Weill Cornell Medicine’s pathbreaking research on the origins of lymphomas and on treatments that exploit these cancers’ biological vulnerabilities.

The key to understanding how the most aggressive lymphomas arise and resist current therapies may lie in mutations that disrupt a critical natural selection process among antibody-producing B cells.

DNA mutations are essential to the rapid development of an array of antibody-producing immune cells called B cells that collectively can recognize a vast number of specific targets. But this process can go awry in people with a mutation in a gene called SETD2, leading to a type of aggressive blood cancer.

Aggressive and relatively common lymphomas called diffuse large B cell lymphomas (DLBCLs) have a critical metabolic vulnerability that can be exploited to trick these cancers into starving themselves, according to a study from researchers at Weill Cornell Medicine and Cornell’s Ithaca campus.

The master regulator behind the development of antibody-producing cells has been identified in a study by investigators at Weill Cornell Medicine. The findings provide new insight into the inner workings of the immune system and may help understand how tissues develop and how certain cancers arise.

Cancer cells can dodge chemotherapy by entering a state that bears similarity to certain kinds of senescence, a type of “active hibernation” that enables them to weather the stress induced by aggressive treatments aimed at destroying them, according to a new study by scientists at Weill Cornell Medicine. These findings have implications for developing new drug combinations that could block senescence and make chemotherapy more effective.

The Office of Academic Integration (OVPAI) has awarded $750,000 in seed grants to 10 studies ranging from refugee health and legal rights, to a vaccine treating fentanyl addiction and overdose, to pancreatic cancer and antibiotic tolerance.

Much of the three-dimensional architecture of the genome in antibody-producing immune cells is dependent on a gene called SMC3. When this gene is not working properly it can lead to improper immune cell development and to cancer, by disrupting how DNA is structured inside the cell nucleus, according to a team of researchers from Weill Cornell Medicine.

Mutations in proteins called histone H1, which help package DNA in chromosomes, are a frequent cause of lymphomas, according to a study led by researchers at Weill Cornell Medicine, NewYork-Presbyterian and The Rockefeller University. The findings could lead to new approaches to treating these cancers.

Space travel, illnesses like COVID-19, and climbing Mount Everest can trigger the body’s stress response systems in similar ways, according to new studies by Weill Cornell Medicine, space agencies and many other investigators.

Dr. Ari Melnick, the Gebroe Family Professor of Hematology/Oncology at Weill Cornell Medicine, has been awarded the American Society of Hematology's (ASH) 2020 Ernest Beutler Lecture and Prize for advancing treatment of acute myeloid leukemia through epigenetic research.

The most common type of non-Hodgkin lymphoma depends for its aggressive growth and survival on an enzyme that can be therapeutically targeted with a novel compound developed at Cornell University, scientists at Weill Cornell Medicine and Cornell’s Ithaca campus have discovered.

Scientists at Weill Cornell Medicine have developed a system that uses cancer patients’ own cells to evaluate the efficacy of treatments. The scientists used their new testbed to show that a two-drug combination potentially would benefit many patients with acute myeloid leukemia (AML).

A gene that originally evolved to help vertebrates’ early ancestors respond to stress is co-opted by cancers to help them resist treatment, according to a study by Weill Cornell Medicine investigators.

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.