Dr. Christopher Mason

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.

Awards, honors, prizes and achievements for the month of August.

About 12,000 bacteria and viruses collected in a sampling from public transit systems and hospitals around the world from 2015 to 2017 had never before been identified.

Two distinct diagnostic tests, a host/pathogen RNA sequencing platform, and spatially-resolved tissue mapping tools were created by a multidisciplinary team of Weill Cornell Medicine and NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital-led researchers and used to map SARS-CoV-2 infections at the height of the initial COVID-19 outbreak in New York City.

As the COVID-19 pandemic enters its second year, scientists are urgently investigating ways to detect signs of the SARS-CoV-2 virus before an outbreak emerges.

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.

An intercampus research team at Weill Cornell Medicine and Cornell’s Ithaca campus has been awarded a five-year, $3.65 million grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to develop a quick, inexpensive method for accurately diagnosing urinary tract infections in kidney transplant patients by carrying out molecular profiling of cell-free DNA in urine.

With the need for wide scale COVID-19 testing to allow societies reopen safely, a group from Weill Cornell Medicine and other academic medical centers and research organizations have announced the launch of a global competition for low-cost, high-quality and scalable COVID-19 tests, called the COVID-19 XPRIZE, in a letter published Aug. 20 in Nature Biotechnology.

The prospect of residency typically brings jitters to newly minted doctors as they prepare to start the next phase of their medical training, and the level and scope of their patient care responsibilities increases. But the transition has become far more complex with numerous unknowns surrounding the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

Physicians and scientists at Weill Cornell Medicine and NewYork-Presbyterian have rapidly mobilized to confront the COVID-19 pandemic, focusing a broad spectrum of expertise on the critical issues the disease is posing to healthcare workers and public health officials.

With the goal of advancing the fight against COVID-19, the Partners of Citadel and Citadel Securities have made a $2 million gift to Weill Cornell Medicine to develop new approaches to protect people from the disease and identify new cases of it.

Weill Cornell Medicine scientists have built the first global database of clinical trials testing a rapidly expanding approach to cancer treatment that involves genetically modifying immune cells to recognize specific targets on a patient’s cancer cells and attack them.

After extensive data gathering and analysis—plus a worldwide media Frenzy—NASA’s famed Twins Study has begun to yield results.

Awards, honors, prizes and achievements for the month of May.

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.  

Weill Cornell Medicine has been awarded a five-year, $9 million Program Project Grant (P01) from the National Cancer Institute (NCI) to better understand how and why patients with an aggressive and incurable form of lymphoma initially respond to treatment, only to relapse over time. 

On a Tuesday in early June, just days before summer break, dozens of third-year medical students gathered in the Belfer Research Building to present findings from independent research projects they’d been working on since February.

Errors in the regulation of gene expression may contribute to the development of a common form of blood cancer and point to potential treatment strategies, according to a new study by scientists from Weill Cornell Medicine and Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.