Dr. Lewis C. Cantley

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

Dr. Lewis Cantley has been awarded a grant from the Gray Foundation to study the genetic mutations that can lead to breast and ovarian cancer, investigating how early-stage precancerous cells can be recognized by the immune system and targeted with preventive or therapeutic cancer vaccines.

Dr. Gina Lee, a former postdoctoral fellow in the Sandra and Edward Meyer Cancer Center at Weill Cornell Medicine who has now joined the institution’s faculty, has won a 2019 Tri-Institutional Breakout Award for Junior Investigators.

Consuming the equivalent of one can of soda per day caused mice predisposed to colon cancer to develop larger tumors, according to a study by Weill Cornell Medicine and NewYork-Presbyterian investigators.

Biochemist Dr. Lewis Cantley is finding increasing evidence of a strong connection between sugar and cancer.

Seven Weill Cornell Medicine faculty members leading multi-institutional research teams were awarded grants from The Starr Foundation's 12th Starr Cancer Consortium Grant Competition to fund their innovative cancer research projects.

A study of the dual pathways that process the essential vitamin folate by Weill Cornell Medicine investigators unexpectedly revealed a new way the cancer drug methotrexate works and may suggest strategies to boost its cancer-killing effects.

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. 

Eight Weill Cornell Medicine faculty members have been selected for the fifth round of the Daedalus Fund for Innovation awards, a pioneering institutional program that helps advance promising applied and translational research projects and emerging technologies that have commercial potential.

A very low carbohydrate, high-fat diet called the ketogenic diet may improve the effectiveness of an emerging class of cancer drugs, according to a study in mice by investigators at Weill Cornell Medicine, Columbia University Irving Medical Center and NewYork-Presbyterian.

Dr. Samuel Bakhoum, a Holman research fellow at Weill Cornell Medicine and a senior resident in radiation oncology at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, has won a 2018 Tri-Institutional Breakout Award for Junior Investigators.

Weill Cornell Medicine’s BioVenture eLab, a hub of the institution’s entrepreneurial activity celebrated a milestone on Jan. 23: the official launch of its new name and the opening of its dedicated space at 1157 York Ave.

Cancer metastasis, the migration of cells from a primary tumor to form distant tumors in the body, can be triggered by a chronic leakage of DNA within tumor cells, according to a team led by Weill Cornell Medicine and Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center researchers.

Weill Cornell Medicine has been awarded a five-year, $11.3 million Specialized Programs of Research Excellence grant from the National Cancer Institute to improve the detection, diagnosis and treatment of prostate cancer. 

Dr. Ghazaleh Ashrafi, a postdoctoral associate in biochemistry at Weill Cornell Medicine, has won a 2017 Tri-Institutional Breakout Award for Junior Investigators.

Weill Cornell Medicine and NewYork-Presbyterian have been named to the nonprofit Stand Up 2 Cancer’s Colorectal Dream Team to drive new advances in colorectal cancer research and treatment.

Combining genetic information from a patient’s tumor cells with three-dimensional cell cultures grown from these tumors and rapidly screening approved drugs can identify the best treatment approaches in patients for whom multiple therapies have failed.

Finding new ways to study cancer and how it spreads is the goal of the Center on the Physics of Cancer Metabolism.

Startup Symposium and Poster Session Scheduled for Jan. 26

Seven winners have been selected for the third round of the Daedalus Fund for Innovation awards, an innovative Weill Cornell Medicine program that helps advance promising applied and translational research projects and emerging technologies that have commercial potential.