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.
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.
The scope of the DNA changes that drive cancers has been illuminated as never before in a set of studies by a large international scientific team including Weill Cornell Medicine researchers. In six studies published Feb. 5 in Nature, and 18 papers in other Nature-affiliated journals, this scientific consortium reported the results from analyses of DNA from more than 2,600 biopsied tumor samples across 38 different types of cancer.
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.
Dr. Simon Scheuring, a professor of physiology and biophysics in anesthesiology at Weill Cornell Medicine has been awarded a prestigious National Institutes of Health Director’s Pioneer Award for a project aimed at solving long-standing mysteries about the structural workings of important proteins.
Dr. Sheila Nirenberg, the Nanette Laitman Professor in Neurology and Neuroscience and a professor of physiology and biophysics at Weill Cornell Medicine, has been named one of Crain’s inaugural Notable Women in Technology in the Greater New York City area.
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.
Dr. Michael LeVine, (PhD ’16), grew up in Taunton, Massachusetts, a city about 40 miles south of Boston. One of the oldest towns in the United States — founded in the 1630s — Taunton in recent decades has suffered through a very modern scourge: the staggering opioid epidemic that has devastated so many communities nationwide.
