News & Events

At a time when voting rights are under threat, inequality is on the rise and teaching the history of race relations in schools is facing a backlash, diversity and inclusion programs in academic medicine are more important than ever, said Dr. James R. Gavin III, in his keynote address for Weill Cornell Medicine’s fourth annual Diversity Week.

Over the past 15 years, public health authorities have downgraded recommendations for the prostate-specific antigen (PSA) test as a screening tool to reduce the overdiagnosis and overtreatment of men with low-grade prostate cancer. Now, researchers from Weill Cornell Medicine have found that while these efforts have been effective, the incidence of higher-grade disease and metastasis at diagnosis have risen. The research was published...

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. The findings may also be useful in the discovery and development of future epilepsy drugs.

In the study, published Feb. 23 in Brain, the researchers were able to track the activities...

Inhibiting an important signaling pathway in brain-resident immune cells may calm brain inflammation and thereby slow the disease process in Alzheimer’s and some other neurodegenerative diseases, suggests a study by Weill Cornell Medicine investigators. The findings point to the possibility of new therapeutic strategies against neurodegenerative diseases, which are relatively common in older adults and so far have no effective, disease-modifying treatments.

Brain inflammation,...

Cancer cells can disrupt a metabolic pathway that breaks down fats and proteins to boost the levels of a byproduct called methylmalonic acid, thereby driving metastasis, according to research led by scientists at Weill Cornell Medicine. The findings open a new lead for understanding how tumors metastasize, or spread to other tissues, and hints at novel ways to block the spread of cancer by targeting the process.

The new ...

Hysteroscopic sterilization, a nonincisional procedure, was found to be as effective as minimally invasive laparoscopic sterilization in preventing pregnancy, but both methods had higher than expected failure rates, according to a new study led by an investigator at Weill Cornell Medicine. 

The comparative study, published April 12 in Fertility and Sterility, found that both methods had failure rates of five to six percent at 5...

Three distinguished Weill Cornell Medicine physician-scientists, Dr. Joseph J. Fins, Dr. Rainu Kaushal and Dr. Shahin Rafii, have been elected to the esteemed Association of American Physicians (AAP).

Regarded as one of the top honors in the field of health and medicine, election to the AAP recognizes physician-scientists exhibiting excellence in the pursuit of medical knowledge and advancing basic or translational science discoveries and their use in...

Among participants who had hepatitis C and who injected drugs, those treated at a non-stigmatizing “accessible care” treatment center co-located with a syringe service program (SSP) were nearly three times more likely to be cured of the infectious disease compared with those referred out to local clinicians through patient navigation, according to a randomized clinical trial led by investigators at Weill Cornell Medicine, NewYork-Presbyterian, NYU Grossman School of Medicine...

Five Weill Cornell Medicine faculty members have been awarded research funding from the Pilot Grant Program of the Mastercard Diversity-Mentorship Collaborative at Weill Cornell Medicine.

Established through the support of a $5 million grant from the Mastercard Impact Fund, the Mastercard Diversity-Mentorship Collaborative aims to build on Weill Cornell Medicine’s foundational mission of enhancing diversity and inclusion in medicine and establish an infrastructure of mentorship that...

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.

There are many types of blood vessels in the human body that are functionally different from each other. In the liver, these vessels are organized into distinct zones marked by “zip codes,” which are designated by the expression of specific proteins....

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. The new information may help scientists improve this type of cancer treatment.

The study, published Feb. 25 in Science Advances, used cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM) to reveal the full-length structure of the glucocorticoid-induced tumor...

Anesthesiology prices jump significantly after medical facilities contract with corporate physician management companies – especially those backed by private equity firms – and threaten to hike patient costs, according to new research by Weill Cornell Medicine and Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health investigators. 

The paper, published...

A patient living with HIV who received a blood stem cell transplant for high-risk acute myeloid leukemia has been free of the virus for 14 months after stopping HIV antiretroviral drug treatment, suggesting a cure, according to the Weill Cornell Medicine physician-scientists who performed the transplant and managed her care. As in two other successful cases that have been reported, the transplanted donor cells bore a mutation that makes them resistant to HIV infection.

The new case of...

A multi-institutional group in New York City has united to address health disparities in multiple chronic diseases through a new collaborative center.

The vision of the Center to Improve Chronic Disease Outcomes through Multi-level and Multi-generational Approaches Unifying Novel Interventions and Training for Health Equity (COMMUNITY Center) is rooted in public health tenets, recognizing that medical advances alone can only partially reduce the outpaced burden of disease on racial and...

By mapping all the protein interactions of a dementia-linked protein in the brain called Tau, a team of Weill Cornell Medicine investigators has created a road map for identifying potential new treatment targets for Alzheimer’s disease and related dementia.

Tau protein has long been implicated in neurodegenerative diseases. Mutations in the gene that encodes the Tau protein result in neurodegenerative conditions like frontotemporal dementia, while in Alzheimer’s disease...

Melanoma cells release small extracellular packages containing the protein nerve growth factor receptor, which primes nearby lymph nodes for tumor metastases, according to a new study by Weill Cornell Medicine investigators.

The study results, published on Nov. 25 in Nature Cancer, may one day help doctors determine which patients need more aggressive treatment and could help with the development of new therapies, said...

COVID-19 vaccination of expectant mothers elicits levels of antibodies to the SARS-CoV-2 outer “spike” protein at the time of delivery that don’t vary dramatically with the timing of vaccination during pregnancy and thus don’t justify delaying vaccination, according to a study from researchers at Weill Cornell Medicine and NewYork-Presbyterian.

The researchers, whose...

A team led by scientists at Weill Cornell Medicine, Scripps Research and the University of Chicago has identified an important site of vulnerability on influenza viruses—a site that future influenza vaccines and antibody therapies should be able to target to prevent or treat infections by a broad set of influenza strains.

The scientists, whose ...

Building on their longtime commitment to social justice, equity and diversity, Louise and Leonard Riggio have made a $5.6 million gift to Weill Cornell Medicine to establish a named scholarship for medical students with financial need who are Black. This scholarship, which will be awarded as part of Weill Cornell Medicine’s debt-free scholarship program for all financially eligible medical students, will cover the full cost of attendance for all four years of medical school. 

The...

Weill Cornell Medicine researchers are using machine learning, a form of artificial intelligence, to shed light on genetic mutations associated with spina bifida. In this birth defect, the neural tube that forms the spinal cord during pregnancy, does not close so that spinal nerves are exposed, resulting in paralysis and high risk of other complications.

Their new study, published online Dec. 16 in PNAS, “brings us closer to...