Diabetes is a disease in which the pancreas either does not produce enough insulin or cells in the body fail to respond to insulin properly. Diabetic patients experience abnormally high blood sugar levels, which can lead to heart disease, stroke, kidney failure, and eye damage. The disease, which affects more than 29 million Americans, is treated with drugs that help to keep blood sugar within a normal range. Steatosis, or fatty liver, occurs in at least half of all diabetics, though the relationship between the two diseases is not clear. Steatosis can also occur in other patients, such as those with hepatitis. It is a condition in which fat accumulates in the liver, causing inflammation and damage to liver cells. Most patients with fatty liver can only be treated with lifestyle and diet changes.

In a study published in the February issue of Diabetes, Obesity and Metabolism, scientists at Weill Cornell Medicine have identified a new drug that appears to treat both of these diseases at the same time. The drug targets a specific protein, called retinoic acid receptor beta-2 (RARB2), which is critical in the development and functioning of pancreatic cells.

"This is a whole new class of drugs," said senior author Dr. Lorraine Gudas, chair of the Department of Pharmacology and the Revlon Pharmaceutical Professor of Pharmacology and Toxicology at Weill Cornell Medicine. "RARB2 is a new target for diabetes treatment. We are also excited because, currently, there is no medicine that effectively treats fatty liver, so this may be a breakthrough therapy."

The researchers studied mice with diabetes. The mice were given the new drug in their water. "We found that this drug restored normal blood sugar levels in the mice," said Dr. Xiao-Han Tang, an assistant research professor in pharmacology at Weill Cornell Medicine, who is an author on the paper. "And we also found that it reduced fatty liver symptoms."

The new drug, which has not been tested in humans, might have several advantages over current treatments. First, it is able to be taken orally, which makes it appealing for patients when compared to injectable diabetes medications. Second, it does not cause weight gain in mice. This is critical, said first author Dr. Steven Trasino, a postdoctoral fellow in pharmacology at Weill Cornell Medicine. "Some of the most commonly used anti-diabetes drugs cause weight gain, which can eventually make both diabetes and fatty liver worse. Avoiding that is a great advantage."

The ability to treat both of these diseases at once could result in major benefits to patients. "We think that this drug is a potential, potent anti-diabetic drug for humans," Dr. Tang said. "It's very exciting." Dr. Gudas and her team, which also includes Dr. Jose Jessurun, a professor of pathology and laboratory medicine and co-author of the paper, are making plans to bring this discovery to the clinic.

Obesity impairs the body's ability to use vitamin A appropriately and leads to deficiencies of the vitamin in major organs, according to new research conducted at Weill Cornell Medicine.

Vitamin A is critical to the proper functioning of many systems in the body, including vision, fetal development, reproduction, immune responses, and wound healing. Vitamin A deficiency impairs these functions, and is also implicated in increased risk of respiratory infections, diabetes, infertility, and delayed growth and bone development. Because of these wide-ranging health effects, people are advised to get adequate amounts of the vitamin either through diet (eggs, milk, meat, and some fruits and vegetables are sources) or supplementation. But the study, published Nov. 2 in Scientific Reports, shows that obesity interferes with the body's ability to use vitamin A, even with adequate intake.

"Our research shows that, even if an obese animal consumes normal amounts of vitamin A, they have deficiencies of the vitamin A in major organs," said first author Dr. Steven Trasino, a postdoctoral fellow in pharmacology at Weill Cornell Medicine. "Obesity is categorized as a state of malnutrition, typically associated with consumption of too many calories and poor intake of essential nutrients. Our data expand on that definition by showing that obesity plays a role in the body's ability to use this essential nutrient properly."

Dr. Lorraine Gudas

The researchers fed mice a diet that had normal vitamin A levels, similar to the recommendations for human vitamin A intake.

"We found that normal-weight mice are healthy on that diet, but obese mice show severe vitamin A deficiencies in their livers, kidneys and pancreas," said senior author Dr. Lorraine Gudas, chair of the Department of Pharmacology and the Revlon Pharmaceutical Professor of Pharmacology and Toxicology at Weill Cornell Medicine.

When the obese mice lost weight, their vitamin A levels returned to normal. "Something about the state of obesity is impairing the body's ability to use vitamin A correctly," Dr. Gudas said.

What was particularly remarkable to the research team, which also included Dr. Xiao-Han Tang, an assistant research professor in pharmacology, and Dr. Jose Jessurun, a professor in pathology, was that the blood levels of vitamin A in all of the mice, including the obese mice, were normal. The deficiency was only noted when the researchers took tissue samples from various organs in the mice. "We call this ‘silent vitamin A deficiency' because it would not be picked up by a standard blood test for the vitamin," Dr. Trasino said.

The new findings suggest that obesity in humans is also associated with low vitamin A levels in many organs. Such deficiencies would have corresponding health effects.

"We know that obesity is associated with many illnesses, such as poor immune response and diabetes," Dr. Gudas said. "What we don't know is why. This gives us more information for understanding how the two go together, but many puzzles remain to be solved before we fully understand why obesity leads to less vitamin A in major organs of the body."

Investigators have long sought the answer to a vexing question: What are the biological mechanisms involved in the development of type 2 diabetes? A recent study from Weill Cornell Medical College researchers suggests that the culprit may be a lack of vitamin A, which helps give rise to the cells, called beta cells, in the pancreas that produce the blood sugar-regulating hormone insulin.

The researchers found in mice models that a lack of vitamin A spurred the death of beta cells, stunting the production of insulin, which is tasked with metabolizing sugars that come from food. These findings, published Dec. 1 in The Journal of Biological Chemistry, may offer new clues into the cause of type 2 diabetes, which is characterized by insulin-resistance, and in advanced cases, inadequate numbers of insulin-producing beta cells.

When the investigators removed vitamin A from the rodents’ diet, they found that the mice began to experience massive losses of beta cells, which resulted in drops in insulin and a big increase in blood glucose. The researchers then reintroduced vitamin A into the animals’ diet and found that the number of beta cells stabilized, insulin production was higher and that blood glucose returned to normal levels.

Because patients with type 1 diabetes and those with advanced type 2 diabetes experience a loss of beta cells, there is a strong interest in developing new treatments that either preserve or replenish them. “From a therapeutic point of view, our research is a very important contribution because there are no drugs available to do this,” said first author Dr. Steven Trasino, a postdoctoral associate in the Department of Pharmacology.

Scientists have understood that vitamin A is essential for the production of insulin-producing cells during fetal development, but whether that role continued into adulthood was not known. The researchers sought to answer that question by using both normal mice and mice that had a genetically impaired ability to store vitamin A.

"While there are thousands of publications on diabetes, there hasn’t been much research on the effects of removing vitamin A from the diets of animals, acting as a model for human disease," said senior author Dr. Lorraine Gudas, chairman of the Department of Pharmacology and the Revlon Pharmaceutical Professor of Pharmacology and Toxicology at Weill Cornell. "How the removal of vitamin A causes the death of the beta cells that make insulin in the pancreas is an important question we want to answer. These beta cells in the pancreas are exquisitely sensitive to the dietary removal of vitamin A. No one has found that before."

These early-stage findings raise the question of whether vitamin A deficiency is involved in humans and animals with type 2 diabetes, either through inadequate diet or through a metabolic defect. They also spark questions about whether a synthetic analog of vitamin A could reverse the disease’s effects.

"Our study sets the platform to take these studies further into pre-clinical and clinical settings," Dr. Trasino said.

Researchers at Weill Cornell Medical College have discovered what they believe may be the first effective drug therapy to prevent tongue cancer, one of the world’s most common cancers. The finding is reported in the June 2 issue of PNAS.

Currently, tongue cancer is treated with radiation and surgery, which can be very disfiguring. Because the cancer is often discovered at later stages — such as when a patient has difficulty swallowing — the five-year survival rates are less than 50 percent.

"Clearly, we need a treatment that can work to help prevent development of the cancer in people at risk, reducing the need for radical surgery," said Dr. Lorraine Gudas, chair of the Department of Pharmacology at Weill Cornell.

"The two drugs we tested showed remarkable benefit in our animal studies and our animal model mirrors development of human tongue cancer. While we have much research yet to do, this is a very exciting discovery," she says.

One of the drugs, Bexarotene, is approved by the FDA to treat T-cell lymphoma. The other, CD1530, is a synthetic derivative of vitamin A, similar to a cousin vitamin A derivative that is currently used as part of a combination chemotherapy for a blood cancer, acute promyelocytic leukemia.

"This is the first time this combination of agents has been used in a solid cancer, and given the impressive results we have seen in this preclinical study, we plan to test this combination in other solid tumors," Dr. Gudas says.

In the study, mice were given a carcinogen that causes the development of tongue cancer. Mice treated with the two drugs developed 75 percent fewer tumors on average than did untreated mice. "We have never seen such a dramatic reduction in cancer that was destined to develop," Dr. Gudas says.

If clinical studies prove successful, individuals at risk for developing tongue cancer — those who smoke and drink alcohol heavily, have a family history of the disease, or develop white "leukoplakia" lesions in the mouth that can signal future development of the cancer — could be treated preventatively, Dr. Gudas says.

She says that there may be a link between the blood cancers treated by vitamin A derivatives and the tongue cancer she has been studying. In both cases their growth likely depends on cancer stem cells — and Bexarotene and CD1530 may modify specific properties of these stem cells.

"This synergistic inhibition may also work on some of the solid cancers in which cancer stem cells play a pivotal role. If the drugs work to prevent tongue cancer, they may also work to treat cancer that has already developed," she adds, "and we are currently doing those studies.

"For the first time, we may be able to develop ways not just to treat, but to prevent, tongue cancer, and that is a remarkable development in this disease."

Other authors on the study are Drs. Xiao-Han Tang, Alison M. Urvalek, Kwame Osei-Sarfo, Tuo Zhang, and Theresa Scognamiglio, all from Weill Cornell. The research was supported by the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research and the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism.

Dr. Carl Nathan Wins Inaugural Anthony Cerami Award in Translational Medicine

Monograph Published in Molecular Medicine

Dr. Carl Nathan, chairman of the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at Weill Cornell Medical College, has been awarded the inaugural Anthony Cerami Award in Translational Medicine from the Feinstein Institute for Medical Research and its journal, Molecular Medicine.

Dr. Carl Nathan

The Cerami award, which carries a $20,000 prize, is conferred semi-annually by the peer-reviewed, open-access journal Molecular Medicine published by the Feinstein Institute, a research center that's part of the North Shore-LIJ Health System. A monograph authored by Dr. Nathan, "A Journey in Science: Promise, Purpose, Privilege," was published Oct. 3 in the journal.

"Anthony Cerami's work exemplifies the principle that basic research can be inspired by challenges in medicine and in turn can drive improvements in medical practice," said Dr. Nathan, also the R.A. Rees Pritchett Professor of Microbiology and Immunology and professor of microbiology, immunology and medicine at Weill Cornell. "It is a special privilege to count him as a friend and to receive an award that bears his name."

The goal of the Cerami Award and its associated monographs is to celebrate the stewardship of the scientific process and document the stories behind making a discovery in medicine and health care so that they endure and inspire future generations of investigators.

"There is almost no chance in formal scientific publications to tell a personal story, certainly not one that spans more than 50 years," Dr. Nathan added. "I hope this Cerami Award monograph and those that follow will give encouragement to younger scientists that what may seem to be a wandering or invisible path may turn out to be the fastest route to a new place, and that coming on a new place in science, and impacting medical practice, is an incomparable experience."

In the monograph, Dr. Nathan writes, "There are many privileges in research. The most obvious is to choose your own path. The most important is to communicate, potentially with anyone, in terms that allow verifiable understanding. Communication in music, art, literature and dance is limitless in intensity, but indeterminate in accuracy. Van Gogh's paintings move me, but there is no way to tell if I understand what he wanted to say. In science, we can repeat the experiment. If we get the same result, we understood, and we can build on that."

The Anthony Cerami Award in Translational Medicine was made possible by the generosity of Anthony Cerami, an American entrepreneur and award-winning research scientist. He is the Hermann Boerhaave Visiting Professor at Leiden University Medical School in the Netherlands, and the founder, chairman of the board and CEO of Araim Pharmaceuticals.

"The Anthony Cerami Award in Translational Medicine was created to recognize investigators who provided the crucial early insight and ideas that are the essence of discovery, creating new fields and research trajectories followed by the persistent clinical investigation that ultimately changes how disease is prevented, diagnosed, and treated," said Dr. Kevin J. Tracey, president of the Feinstein Institute, editor in chief of Molecular Medicine and a Cerami Award committee member. "Carl Nathan epitomizes the insight, genius, and resolve that are at the heart of the discovery process."

Additional Awards and Honors

Dr. Peter M. Fleischut, assistant professor of anesthesiology, was named an editorial board member of the Association of American Medical Colleges' journal, Academic Medicine on Sept. 4. In addition, Dr. Fleischut was appointed to the American Society of Anesthesiologists ad-hoc committee on health policy research in August. The society is an educational research and scientific association with a strong commitment to advocacy at the federal and state levels.

Dr. Lorraine Gudas, chairman of the Department of Pharmacology, the Revlon Pharmaceutical Professor of Pharmacology and Toxicology, professor of pharmacology, professor of pharmacology in medicine, professor of pharmacology in urology and professor of pharmacology in complementary and integrative medicine, was appointed to a three-year term on the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's Nonprescription Drugs Advisory Committee beginning July 24. The purpose of this committee is to analyze available data regarding the safety and efficacy of over-the-counter medications or any other nonprescription, FDA-regulated product. The committee advises the commissioner on conditions in which these medications are considered safe and effective, as well as suggesting new applications for existing drugs.

Dr. Vivek Mittal, associate professor of cell and developmental biology and associate professor of cell and developmental biology in cardiothoracic surgery, was selected in September by the Indian National Science Academy as the Dr. V Ramalingaswami Chair. The honor will allow Dr. Mittal to travel to India for three weeks meeting with and lecturing to scientists at various universities and research facilities in order to foster ongoing international collaborations. The academy seeks to promote science in India as well as to establish important relationships between upcoming Indian scientists and their distinguished colleagues around the world.

Dr. William Reisacher, associate professor of otolaryngology, was appointed to Merck's Advisory Board. The pharmaceutical company strives to make a difference in the lives of people globally through innovative medicines, vaccines, biologic therapies, consumer care and animal health products.

Dr. Licia Selleri, associate professor of cell and developmental biology and associate professor of neuroscience, will present the Special Distinguished ISDB MOD Lecture at the International Hox and TALE Transcription Factors in Development and Disease Meeting, scheduled for early October in the Netherlands. The lecture, titled "Making Faces with TALEs," is sponsored by the International Society of Developmental Biologists and Mechanisms of Development. The conference will bring together scientists from around the world to discuss the results of research into the regulatory landscape of the HOX genetic complex and of the TALE genes and the mechanistic basis underlying HOX-TALE-promoted diseases.

Dr. Luise Weinstein, assistant professor of clinical medicine, was awarded the ACN Physician of the Year Award in July. The award is given annually by the NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital Department of Nursing to recognize physicians who consistently practice with nursing and support staff in a collaborative, collegial and respectful manner.

Dr. Samie Jaffrey, professor of pharmacology at Weill Cornell, has won the 2014 ASBMB Young Investigator Award from the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology.

The award recognizes outstanding research contributions to biochemistry and molecular biology by a scientist with no more than 15 years of postdoctoral experience. The award consists of a plaque, $5,000, transportation and expenses to present a lecture at the society's annual meeting, scheduled for April 26-30, 2014 in San Diego.

"I am honored to receive this recognition for work done by me and my research team," Dr. Jaffrey said. "It would not have been possible without the outstanding graduate students and postdocs who have worked in my lab. I also feel honored to be included among the prominent scientists who have received this award in the past."

"We are extremely proud of Dr. Jaffrey's research contributions, and he is very deserving of this ASBMB Young Investigator Award," said Dr. Lorraine Gudas, chair of the Department of Pharmacology, the Revlon Pharmaceutical Professor of Pharmacology and Toxicology, professor of pharmacology, professor of pharmacology in medicine, professor of pharmacology in urology and professor of pharmacology in complementary and integrative medicine at Weill Cornell. Dr. Gudas nominated Dr. Jaffrey for the award.

Dr. Jaffrey's research is focused on identifying the roles of RNA regulation in neuronal growth, plasticity and development. To gain that insight, he has developed a tool that images RNA and its functions in cells by causing them to emit a green fluorescent light. More information about Jaffrey's research group at Weill Cornell can be found at http://www.jaffreylab.org.

"These tools are allowing us to understand the inner workings of the cell with a precision that was not previously available, which will provide new insights into cancer and neurological diseases," said Dr. Jaffrey, who will lecture on the topic during the society's annual meeting next year. "I am excited to share my laboratory's work at the annual ASBMB meeting."

The American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology is a nonprofit scientific and education organization whose mission is to advance the science of biochemistry and molecular biology through publication of scientific and education journals, meetings, advocacy, research support and science education.

This is the second major award presented to Dr. Jaffrey in the last three months. In June, Dr. Jaffrey won a Blavatnik Award for Young Scientists from the New York Academy of Sciences. The award showcases scientists who are 42 or younger and work in New York, New Jersey or Connecticut. That award carries a $50,000 unrestricted cash prize made possible by the Blavatnik Family Foundation.

Dr. Jessica G. Davis, associate professor of clinical pediatrics, received the 2013 Award for Excellence in Human Genetics Education from the American Society of Human Genetics. This annual award recognizes one individual who has made exceptional contributions to genetics education. Typically, recipients have made contributions in multiple areas of genetic science, have contributions that are influential to individuals and/or organizations and have many years of experience in the field of genetic education. The society is the primary professional membership organization for human genetics specialists worldwide.

Dr. Lorraine Gudas, chairman of the Department of Pharmacology, the Revlon Pharmaceutical Professor of Pharmacology and Toxicology, professor of pharmacology, professor of pharmacology in medicine, professor of pharmacology in urology and professor of pharmacology in complementary and integrative medicine, was appointed to a three-year term on the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's Nonprescription Drugs Advisory Committee beginning on July 24. The purpose of this committee is to analyze available data regarding the safety and efficacy of over-the-counter medications or any other nonprescription, FDA-regulated product. The committee advises the commissioner on conditions in which these medications are considered safe and effective, as well as suggesting new applications for existing drugs.

Dr. Ana C. Krieger, medical director of the Weill Cornell Center for Sleep Medicine, associate professor of clinical medicine, associate professor of medicine in clinical neurology and associate professor of clinical genetic medicine, was elected to the American College of Chest Physicians' Sleep Medicine Network Steering Committee. The committee strives to promote sleep medicine as a specialty, provide educational and research opportunities and raise awareness of issues pertinent to the practice of sleep medicine. The college works toward prevention, diagnosis and treatment of all chest diseases with a network of nearly 19,000 members providing care in more than 100 countries worldwide.

Dr. Ellen Scherl, director of the Jill Roberts Center for Inflammatory Bowel Disease, the Jill Roberts Professor of Inflammatory Bowel Disease and professor of clinical medicine, received the Jill Roberts Professorship of Clinical Medicine, which will allow her to extend her research and patient care efforts in the Jill Roberts Center for Inflammatory Bowel Disease. The Jill Roberts Center is dedicated to the research and treatment of inflammatory bowel disease.

Dr. Licia Selleri, associate professor of cell and developmental biology, will present the Special Distinguished ISDB-MOD Lecture at the International HOX and TALE Transcription Factors in Development and Disease Meeting, scheduled for October in the Netherlands. The lecture, titled "Making Faces with TALEs," is sponsored by the International Society of Developmental Biologists and Mechanisms of Development. The conference will bring together scientists from around the world to discuss the results of research into the regulatory landscape of the HOX genetic complex and of the TALE genes and the mechanistic basis underlying HOX-TALE-promoted diseases.

Mouse Model Developed at Weill Cornell Perfectly Mimics Human Kidney Cancer

Researchers at Weill Cornell Medical College have developed the first mouse model that mimics one of the most common — and severe — forms of human kidney cancer.

Clear cell renal cancer is the most commonly diagnosed form of human kidney cancer, found in approximately 70 percent of patient cases. While there are available treatments for patients who develop metastases, they only prolong life, not cure the disease, said Dr. Lorraine Gudas, chair of Weill Cornell Medical College's Pharmacology Department and the Revlon Pharmaceutical Professor of Pharmacology and Toxicology.

Dr. Lorraine Gudas

With drug testing in humans a long and expensive process, researchers have turned to mouse models to assess potential new treatments and therapies more quickly, cheaply and efficiently. In order to accomplish this, however, investigators needed to develop a model that closely mimicked the human disease. Those efforts have been unsuccessful in that endeavor — until now.

Dr. Gudas and Dr. David Nanus, chief of the Division of Hematology and Medical Oncology, the Mark W. Pasmantier Professor of Hematology and Oncology in Medicine, professor of urology and professor of medicine at Weill Cornell, have successfully devised the first mouse model that has all of the molecular markers that are in human kidney cancer.

"This is the first time that a model like this has been developed," said Dr. Gudas, who is also professor of pharmacology, professor of pharmacology in medicine, professor of pharmacology in urology and professor of pharmacology in complementary and integrative medicine at Weill Cornell. "Others have tried various approaches to develop a mouse model and they have not succeeded."

They achieved this goal, they say, by taking advantage of the molecular underpinnings of clear cell kidney cancer. Many researchers have believed that the protein transcription factor HIF-2 alpha was the driving force behind clear cell kidney cancer, but Dr. Gudas, Dr. Nanus and their colleagues Dr. Leiping Fu, Dr. Maria Shevchuk and Denise Minton found that HIF-1 alpha, which is in the same family as HIF-2 alpha, was at the root of the disease.

Dr. Gudas and Dr. Nanus developed a mouse model that expressed a super-active form of HIF-1 alpha. These mice indeed developed clear cell kidney cancer like that found in humans, with the same molecular alterations.

"We're really excited about it," Dr. Gudas said. "We can now much more quickly test new drugs and we can understand more about what makes kidney cancer cells resistant to some of the drugs."

Dr. Orli Etingin

Dr. Orli Etingin Receives the Maurice R. Greenberg Distinguished Service Award

Dr. Orli Etingin, the Lisa and Sanford B. Ehrenkranz Professor in Women's Health at Weill Cornell Medical College, received the prestigious Maurice R. Greenberg Distinguished Service Award during a celebration May 30 at the Plaza Hotel.

Established in 1980 by Maurice R. Greenberg, board chairman emeritus of NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital and Dr. Peter Guida, a retired NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center surgeon, the award recognizes exceptional and longstanding service demonstrated by a senior member of the medical staff.

Dr. Etingin, who is also professor of clinical medicine and professor of medicine in clinical obstetrics and gynecology at Weill Cornell, began her clinical practice at NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell in 1994 in general internal medicine and hematology-oncology. In 2000, she founded and was the founding medical director of the Iris Cantor Women's Health Center, a premier patient care provider. She served as associate chair of the Weill Cornell Department of Medicine from 1992 to 1997, and until 2009 was vice chair.

Dr. Lorraine Gudas of Weill Cornell Awarded the 2013 Future of Health Technology Award for her Work in Cancer Research

Dr. Lorraine Gudas

Dr. Lorraine Gudas, chair of Weill Cornell Medical College's Pharmacology Department and the Revlon Pharmaceutical Professor of Pharmacology and Toxicology, has recently received the 2013 Future of Health Technology Award for her research on new drugs for cancer treatment and prevention.

The Future of Health Technology Award is given annually by the Future of Health Technology Institute to groundbreaking thinkers whose work can "help reduce suffering, maximize the potential for self-realization, and extend human potential through technology," according to the institute. The award was presented during the Future of Technology's annual summit, which was hosted at the MIT Faculty Club.

With the goal of improving therapies for cancer and other diseases, Dr. Gudas and her collaborators have provided major insights into the roles of retinoids in the regulation of cell growth and differentiation. Retinoids, which include both natural and synthetic derivatives of vitamin A, control many aspects of normal cell differentiation and can inhibit cancer development as well as progression. Dr. Gudas also studies the roles of retinoids and gene expression in tissue regeneration and repair.

Dr. Gudas, an expert in the field of cancer research, is the first woman to lead a basic science department at Weill Cornell. She has also served in leadership positions for several organizations, including a term as a member of the American Association of Cancer Research Board of Directors. The association is the largest organization of cancer researchers in the United States.

The Future of Health Technology Institute was established to identify the most promising technologies to improve the quality of health care, and to define promising health technology research areas needed to meet future health challenges. Based in Hopkinton Mass., the think tank is dedicated to defining the advancing direction of health technology in the 21st century.

Additional Awards and Honors

Dr. Frank A. Chervenak, chairman of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, the Given Foundation Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology and professor of obstetrics and gynecology, received an honorary doctorate from the University of Buenos Aires, Argentina, in March. In April, Dr. Chervenak also became an honorary member of the Republic of Armenia's Association of Obstetrics and Gynecology and Neonatologist, the Georgian Obstetrics and Gynecologist Association, Georgia, and the Academy of Medicine, Paraguay.

Dr. Scott Ely, associate professor of clinical pathology and laboratory medicine, and his team were chosen as a finalist for the Cornell Venture Challenge for inventing an immunohistochemical platform to assess myeloma proliferation. The Cornell Venture Challenge is Cornell University's business plan competition in which applicants pitched their business ideas to a panel of professional investors and entrepreneurs. Dr. Ely's team was a finalist among hundreds of applicants for the challenge, which was sponsored by BR Venture Fund, a student-run venture capital fund at Cornell University's Johnson School of Graduate Management.

Dr. Jo A. Hannafin, professor of orthopaedic surgery, was presented with a Physician of the Year award from Castle Connolly Medical Ltd. at a ceremony March 18 at the Pierre Hotel in New York City. Awards are given to physicians who are nationally recognized leaders and contributors in their specialties. Dr. Hannafin was one of three physicians who received the Clinical Excellence Award, recognizing physicians who exemplify excellence in clinical medical practice.

Dr. Gary J. Lelli Jr., assistant professor of ophthalmology, served as the co-course director for the Open Medical Institute's 2013 Salzburg Weill Cornell Seminar in Ophthalmology April 7-13 in Salzburg, Austria. The Salzburg Medical Seminars, established in 1993, is a postgraduate medical education program founded by the American Austrian Foundation and physicians from Weill Medical College of Cornell University.

 Nearly two dozen faculty, students and postdoctoral associates from Weill Cornell Medical College joined thousands in Washington D.C. Monday, urging Congress to restore more than $2 billion in funding for the National Institutes of Health — without which medical advances and discoveries could be negatively impacted for decades.

"It's really important for us to have funding for all this research that goes on," said Will Smith, a graduate student at Weill Cornell who's pursuing a doctorate in cellular biology. "A lot of investigators are going to be hard-pressed if lawmakers cut the budget more. Research is vitally important, not only for the health of the nation, but also for our understanding of how things work."

Weill Cornell medical student Alisa Dong, left, expresses support for medical research with Manuela Passrugger, right, an intern in Dr. Stefano Rivella's lab.

Weill Cornell's contingent traveled with a group from Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons to march with thousands of people from nearly 200 organizations at the steps of the Carnegie Library for the Rally for Medical Research.

The rally, organized by the American Association for Cancer Research, strove to raise awareness about the critical need to sustain investment in the National Institutes of Health, the largest source of funding for medical research, to improve health, spur more progress and save more lives.

Participants carried signs proclaiming, "We are the future for the cure!" and "Research saves lives," and wore T-shirts with the mantra, "Rally for Medical Research, More Progress, More Hope, More Life," with a space to write in what or who they were rallying for — "A cure for cancer," "My dad," or "My son." They voiced support for the National Institutes of Health and medical advances made possible because of it, just as the first effects of the largest cut to federally-funded biomedical research in recent memory become known.

Dr. Monica Guzman, assistant professor of pharmacology in medicine at Weill Cornell, needs her federal research grant to develop therapeutic strategies for targeting leukemic stem cells. But as funding for the National Institutes of Health declined as mandated in the sequester, so has Dr. Guzman's grant, slashed by 10 percent.

Compelled to act, Dr. Guzman joined the united front with fellow members of the medical research community in hopes of effecting positive change.

"It's very motivating to see people like me making their voices heard," she said.

Following the rally, the Weill Cornell group listened to a legislative briefing with Chris Bigelow from the office of U.S. Rep. Nita Lowey, who represents Rockland and Westchester counties, and Reba Raffaelli, from the office of U.S. Rep. Charles Rangel, who represents parts of Manhattan and the Bronx. The legislative aides detailed the federal budget process, changes to funding as a result of sequestration and future budget expectations.

Weill Cornell's participants hope that their activities Monday change lawmakers' minds about the value of biomedical research.

"I hope that Congress is listening," said Tracey Van Kempen, a fifth-year graduate student in the neuroscience program at Weill Cornell. "I know that some members of Congress are listening."

Media outlets including USA Today, Nature News Blog and MSN.com covered the rally and featured some of Weill Cornell's participants, including Dr. Lorraine Gudas, chairman of pharmacology, and Smith.

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