News & Events

Reinforcement Learning, an artificial intelligence approach, has the potential to guide physicians in designing sequential treatment strategies for better patient outcomes but requires significant improvements before it can be applied in clinical settings, finds a new study by Weill Cornell Medicine and Rockefeller University researchers.

Reinforcement Learning (RL) is a class of machine learning algorithms able to make a series of decisions over time. Responsible for recent AI...

Prostate cancer hijacks the normal prostate’s growth regulation program to release the brakes and grow freely, according to Weill Cornell Medicine researchers. The discovery, published Dec. 13 in Nature Communications, paves the way for new diagnostic tests to guide treatment and could also help drug developers identify novel ways to stop the disease.

A protein called the androgen receptor...

Glutamate transporters pump glutamate from the synaptic cleft back into brain cells after its release during neurotransmission. A new study by Weill Cornell Medicine investigators has found that free fatty acids, including an omega-3 fatty acid called DHA, can reduce the amount of glutamate uptake by diminishing the sodium ion gradient that powers the transporters.

The study, published Dec. 6...

A newer vaccine against hepatitis B virus was clearly superior to an older vaccine type in inducing a protective antibody response among people living with HIV who didn’t respond to prior vaccination, according to the results of an international study led by a Weill Cornell Medicine investigator.

The...

Weill Cornell Medicine has received a $1.4 million, four-year grant from the U.S. Department of Defense to investigate a new therapeutic approach for the most common form of kidney cancer.

The grant is one of 10 Idea Awards the department funded this year to support innovative, high-risk, high-reward science that could lead to a paradigm shift in cancer care. The funding will enable principal investigators Dr. Lorraine Gudas...

An emerging class of anticancer drugs called EZH2 inhibitors may greatly enhance the potency of some cancer immunotherapies, according to a preclinical study led by Weill Cornell Medicine lymphoma researchers.

The inhibitors target the EZH2 enzyme, whose activity in tumor cells is now recognized as a significant factor in many cancers. The study, published Dec. 5 in Cancer Cell, found that EZH2 inhibition...

Many individuals seeking asylum in the United States show increased stress and pain symptoms that are associated with indications of cardiovascular disease, according to Weill Cornell Medicine researchers.  

“We would not have expected the rates of these illnesses or conditions to be this high in such a young, otherwise healthy population,” said the study’s senior author, Dr. Gunisha Kaur,...

Specially packaged DNA secreted by tumor cells can trigger an immune response that inhibits the metastatic spread of the tumor to the liver, according to a study led by researchers at Weill Cornell Medicine, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and Korea’s Yonsei University. The discovery improves the scientific understanding of cancer progression and anticancer immunity, and could yield new clinical tools for assessing and reducing metastasis risk.

In the...

Weill Cornell Medicine has recently promoted longtime institutional leaders Thomas W. Stokes, Michael T. Murphy and Eric M. Saidel to elevated administrative posts.

Stokes Leads Financial Operations

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.

Severe COVID-19 has been considered an...

Increasing the levels of chemicals naturally produced in the body called endocannabinoids may thwart the highly addictive nature of opioids such as morphine and oxycodone while maintaining the drugs’ ability to relieve pain, according to Weill Cornell Medicine investigators working with researchers from The Center for Youth Mental Health at NewYork-...

Inhibiting an immune signaling protein called TLR7 may help preserve the protective layer surrounding nerve fibers in the brain during both Alzheimer’s disease and ordinary aging, suggests a study led by researchers at Weill Cornell Medicine.

Most nerve fibers in vertebrates are encased in sheaths made largely of a protein called myelin, which protects the fibers and greatly enhances the efficiency of their signal conduction. The destruction of myelin sheaths—demyelination—can occur in...

A fungus discovered in the mouse stomach may hold a key to fungal evolution within the gastrointestinal tract, according to new research led by Weill Cornell Medicine investigators. The finding suggests that preclinical studies until now have overlooked a major influencer of mouse physiology.

Scientists recently have come to appreciate the importance, for human health and disease, of microbes—often called “commensals”—that naturally dwell in the gut. Bacterial commensals, for example,...

Tirzepatide, a new injectable weight-loss drug with the trade name Zepbound, reduced the risk of diabetes in patients with obesity and prediabetes by more than 90% over a three-year period, compared with placebo, according to the results of a new study led by investigators at Weill Cornell Medicine, NewYork-Presbyterian, Yale School of Medicine and other institutions.

The study, published Nov. 13 in the New England...

The secret to cellular youth may depend on keeping the nucleolus—a condensed structure inside the nucleus of a cell—small, according to Weill Cornell Medicine investigators. The findings were elucidated in yeast, a model organism famous for making bread and beer and yet surprisingly similar to humans on the cellular level.

The study, published Nov. 25 in Nature Aging, may lead to new longevity treatments that could extend...

Working with week-old zebrafish larva, researchers at Weill Cornell Medicine and colleagues decoded how the connections formed by a network of neurons in the brainstem guide the fishes’ gaze. The study, published Nov. 22 in Nature Neuroscience, found that a simplified artificial circuit, based on the architecture of this neuronal system, can predict activity in the network. In addition to shedding light on how the brain handles...

With just one slide and three minutes, fourth-year graduate student Erin Keblish described how she is developing a carbon nanotube-based sensor that could act like a “smoke detector” for early signs of deadly sepsis, during Weill Cornell Medicine’s ninth annual Three-Minute Thesis (3MT®) competition on November 13. 

Keblish, who is a graduate student in physiology, biophysics and systems biology,...

An enzyme called EZH2 has an unexpected role in driving aggressive tumor growth in treatment-resistant prostate cancers, according to a new study by scientists at Weill Cornell Medicine. The results could potentially lead to new therapies for patients with limited options and add to the significant progress the teams have made in understanding how advanced prostate cancer develops resistance to treatments that target androgen receptors.

Prostate cancer is a leading cause of cancer-...

A novel combination of surgery and embolization used to treat subdural hematomas, bleeding between the brain and its protective membrane due to trauma, reduces the risk of follow-up surgeries, according to researchers at Weill Cornell Medicine and University at Buffalo. Embolization is a minimally invasive procedure that blocks specific blood vessels to stop abnormal bleeding.

The finding is based on EMBOLISE, a multi-center, randomized, clinical study that compared chronic subdural...

By Giles Morris

Weill Cornell Medicine and the Cornell Jeb E. Brooks School of Public Policy have established the Cornell Health Policy Center (CHPC) to serve as the locus for health policy impact, research and training across Cornell.

The center connects health policy researchers across Cornell’s campuses to help shape effective health policy at the federal, state and local levels. It will focus on policies aimed at...