Dr. Robert Schwartz

The Griffis Faculty Club buzzed with excitement as doctoral students from the Weill Cornell Graduate School of Medical Sciences presented their research, drawing peers, faculty and alumni to the 44th annual Vincent du Vigneaud Symposium on April 24.

In their effort to answer a decades-old biological question about how the hepatitis B virus is able to establish infection of liver cells, research led by Weill Cornell Medicine, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and The Rockefeller University identified a vulnerability that opens the door to new treatments.

Severe COVID-19 arises in part from the SARS-CoV-2 virus’s impact on mitochondria, tiny oxygen-burning power plants in cells, which can help trigger a cascade of organ- and immune system-damaging events, suggests a study by investigators at Weill Cornell Medicine, Johns Hopkins Medicine, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, and the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, along with other members of the COVID-19 International Research Team.

Researchers from Weill Cornell Medicine have used a cutting-edge model system to uncover the mechanism by which SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, induces new cases of diabetes, and worsens complications in people who already have it.

A new study reported that SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID, can infect dopamine neurons in the brain and trigger senescence—when a cell loses the ability to grow and divide.

Cancers often release molecules into the bloodstream that pathologically alter the liver, shifting it to an inflammatory state, causing fat buildup and impairing its normal detoxifying functions.

People with dementia have protein build-up in astrocytes that may trigger abnormal antiviral activity and memory loss.

The activity of a gene called CIART is a key factor in the establishment of the viral infection that causes COVID-19.

SARS-CoV-2 infections of women in late pregnancy frequently spread to their placentas and led to inflammation.

The SARS-CoV-2 virus can infect specialized pacemaker cells that maintain the heart’s rhythmic beat, setting off a self-destruction process within the cells, according to a preclinical study co-led by researchers at Weill Cornell Medicine, NewYork-Presbyterian and NYU Grossman School of Medicine.

Researchers at Weill Cornell Medicine have identified a key protein that induces the program to build specialized liver blood vessels. The discovery could lead to engineered replacement hepatic tissue to treat common liver diseases.

Two Weill Cornell Medicine physician-scientists, Dr. Randy Longman and Dr. Robert Schwartz, have been elected as members of the American Society for Clinical Investigation.

An FDA-approved drug that has been in clinical use for more than 70 years may protect against lung injury and the risk of blood clots in severe COVID-19 and other disorders that cause immune-mediated damage to the lungs.

COVID-19 may bring high risks of severe disease and death in many patients by disrupting key metabolic signals and thereby triggering hyperglycemia, according to a new study from researchers at Weill Cornell Medicine and NewYork-Presbyterian. 

SARS-CoV-2, the virus causing the global COVID-19 pandemic, can infect human pancreatic cells and alter their physiology.

The heart damage seen in many severely ill COVID-19 patients results in part from infection-activated immune cells called macrophages, which infiltrate the heart and secrete cell-damaging chemicals, according to a study co-led by researchers at Weill Cornell Medicine, NewYork-Presbyterian, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and Columbia University Irving Medical Center.

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.

A team led by investigators at Weill Cornell Medicine and NewYork-Presbyterian has used advanced technology and analytics to map, at single-cell resolution, the cellular landscape of diseased lung tissue in severe COVID-19 and other infectious lung diseases.

Human organoids, tiny organ-like structures grown in the laboratory, can be used to identify potential COVID-19 drugs in an automated, high-throughput fashion.

A team led by Weill Cornell Medicine scientists has pioneered a method for manufacturing functioning human blood vessels and demonstrated that they can carry blood in lab-grown model organs and tumors.