Physiology and Biophysics

Dr. Chenxu Zhu, an assistant professor of physiology and biophysics at Weill Cornell Medicine and a core faculty member of the New York Genome Center, has been awarded the National Institutes of Health Director’s New Innovator Award to fund an ambitious project to develop single-cell sequencing tools, known collectively as “multi-omics,” that will help track age-related changes in gene regulation programs, as well as cell decay, in brain cells from preclinical models. 

A study led by researchers at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and Weill Cornell Medicine discovered a new relationship between cancer cells and the immune system, and shows how cancer can selfishly hijack a normally helpful immune pathway.

An atlas that catalogues gene activity and the levels of small molecules called metabolites in tumor samples offers a new way of identifying the deep mechanisms of cancer, according to researchers at Weill Cornell Medicine and Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.

Two highly similar molecules with essential, but often contrasting, signaling roles in most life forms exert their distinct effects through subtle differences in their bindings to their signaling partners.

Dr. Ekta Khurana, an associate professor of physiology and biophysics at Weill Cornell Medicine, has received a 3-year, $1.2 million grant from the United States Department of Defense to investigate how prostate cancer cells evolve to become resistant to hormone-blocking therapy. 

Two Weill Cornell Medicine faculty members, Dr. David Lyden and Dr. Harel Weinstein have been elected fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).

Acinetobacter pittii (A. pittii), a type of bacteria, is evolving to become more resistant to antibiotics and is finding ways to survive in the harsh environment of the International Space Station.

An advanced software tool for analyzing DNA sequences from tumor samples has uncovered likely new cancer-driving genes, in a study led by Weill Cornell Medicine researchers.

A common, spontaneous mutation in blood stem cells, which has been linked to higher risks of blood cancer and cardiovascular disease, may promote these diseases by altering the stem cells’ programming of gene activity and the mix of blood cells they produce.

A collaboration between Weill Cornell Medicine scientists and other leaders in Alzheimer’s disease research has revealed widespread metabolic changes in the brains of individuals with Alzheimer’s disease. 

A three-year, million-dollar grant from the W.M. Keck Foundation will fund an ambitious project, led by Weill Cornell Medicine, to develop a next-generation, high-speed atomic-force microscope (AFM), capable of capturing the dynamics of proteins in unprecedented detail.

A class of proteins known as TMEM16 scramblases permit rearrangement of lipids in the cell membrane chiefly by...

Researchers at Weill Cornell Medicine and Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center have identified a previously unrecognized form of hormone therapy-resistant prostate cancer, as well as a set of molecules that drive its growth. This discovery opens the door to the development of therapies that treat this specific disease.

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.

Election to the National Academy of Sciences is one of the highest honors a scientist can receive. 

New evidence from a zebrafish model of epilepsy may help resolve a debate into how seizures originate, according to Weill Cornell Medicine and NewYork-Presbyterian investigators. 

Using cutting-edge techniques, Weill Cornell Medicine and Memorial Sloan Kettering investigators have visualized the structure of a receptor targeted by an anti-cancer immunotherapy.

Two multi-institutional teams led by Weill Cornell Medicine scientists have been awarded grant support from the Starr Cancer Consortium. Both grants will fund work applying new technologies to develop more detailed knowledge of tumor biology, with one team focusing on Hodgkin lymphoma and the other on the purity of tumor samples on pathology slides.

Investigators from Weill Cornell Medicine and Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center have discovered how a drug for multiple sclerosis interacts with its targets, a finding that may pave the way for better treatments.

Using an innovative new imaging technique, researchers at Weill Cornell Medicine have revealed the inner workings of a family of light-sensing molecules in unprecedented detail and speed.