News & Events

Weill Cornell Medicine has received a four-year, $8.2 million grant from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) to develop and test an experimental on-demand male contraceptive pill that temporarily stops sperm in their tracks. Dr. Jochen Buck and Dr. Lonny Levin, both professors of pharmacology at Weill Cornell, are leading the...

Researchers at Weill Cornell Medicine have identified a molecular pathway that contributes to the death of insulin-producing beta cells in the pancreas. Experiments with preclinical models and human pancreatic cells found that blocking certain proteins in the pathway helped protect beta cells from excessive cellular stress. The discovery, recently published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation, suggests a new strategy to preserve the...

Losartan, a drug commonly prescribed for high blood pressure, boosts brown adipose tissue or “brown fat” activity and enhances its metabolism, according to a preclinical study by Weill Cornell Medicine, Rockefeller University and Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center researchers. The findings suggest that repurposing losartan—an angiotensin receptor blocker (ARB) with a well-known safety profile—may potentially offer a therapeutic approach to stimulate brown fat, which has been linked to...

Opioid painkillers are some of the strongest analgesic medicines, but they are also the riskiest owing to a range of side effects, including addiction. An experimental opioid painkiller designed to be reversibly switched on and off with different light frequencies, keeping its action local and out of the brain, may eliminate the dangerous side effects of current opioids, according to a study led by Weill Cornell Medicine and University...

Dr. Robbie Majzner, an esteemed physician-scientist whose research focuses on children with intractable cancers, has been awarded the 11th annual Gale and Ira Drukier Prize in Children’s Health Research by Weill Cornell Medicine.

The Drukier Prize recognizes an early-career pediatrician whose research contributions have the potential to significantly improve the health and well-being of children and adolescents. Dr. Majzner is an associate professor of...

Parents of children with mental health problems may experience stigma when the ideals that matter most to being considered a “good parent” are perceived as not being met, according to preliminary research led by Weill Cornell Medicine, Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons and NewYork-Presbyterian investigators. Discussions with a group of these parents are helping inform new approaches to supporting parents and restoring more positive feelings about parenting skills...

A scientist at Weill Cornell Medicine is working with colleagues at the University of Massachusetts Amherst on new, complementary research efforts engineering therapeutic Salmonella to target critical gaps in treatment for drug-resistant triple-negative breast cancers. The team has received a five-year, $13.1 million grant, the first of its kind for bacteria cancer therapies awarded by the U.S. National Institutes of Health, to support research to design nontoxic bacteria strains that can...

Dr. Samie Jaffrey, the Greenberg-Starr Professor in the Department of Pharmacology at Weill Cornell Medicine, has received a five-year, $5.5 million NIH Director’s Transformative Research Award for the comprehensive study of how messenger RNAs are regulated in cells by small molecules called metabolites.

The NIH Director’s Transformative Research Awards, part of the Common Fund’s High-Risk, High-...

Dr. Olivier Elemento, the director of the Englander Institute for Precision Medicine at Weill Cornell Medicine, has been awarded an NIH Director's Pioneer Award to build an artificial intelligence (AI) tool to accelerate cancer research, starting with lung cancer.

Part of the Common Fund’s High-Risk, High-Reward Research program, the award supports scientists with outstanding records of...

Researchers have discovered a new cell type that may help regulate blood vessel growth in the heart during development and in response to injury, according to a study from Weill Cornell Medicine. Working with zebrafish, they found that the new cell type helps stabilize the vascular network that supplies oxygen to growing cardiac muscle.

The findings, published Aug. 20 in Nature Communications, could...

Surgery to remove lymph nodes in the neck may interfere with cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) drainage from the brain, contributing to cognitive impairment, according to new multicenter research led by Weill Cornell Medicine scientists.

The paper, published Sept. 29 in Neuron, found that patients with head and neck cancer undergoing cervical lymphadenectomy, a procedure to remove nearby lymph nodes to reduce...

Weill Cornell Medicine investigators have determined the mechanism by which a molecule within cells can help tune the light sensitivity of the eyes. The study identified the molecule’s binding site on a protein in retinal cells, which should enable the development of drugs that target this site to treat related eye diseases.

Weill Cornell Medicine has received major new funding to support collaborative research spanning clinical trials, precision medicine and drug target discovery with the potential to improve outcomes for patients with challenging cancers.

Dr. Effie Apostolou

Associate Professor of Molecular Biology in Medicine and member of the Meyer Cancer Center and of the...

Chronic stress may contribute to the pain and urinary symptoms experienced by people with interstitial cystitis/bladder pain syndrome (IC/BPS) by triggering changes in the bladder and nervous system, according to a preclinical study by Weill Cornell Medicine investigators. IC/BPS, a chronic condition affecting millions, causes pain, pressure or discomfort in the bladder and pelvic area, often accompanied by an urgent or frequent need to urinate.

Researchers at Weill Cornell Medicine have received a $17.4 million, five-year grant from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases to discover new approaches to shorten tuberculosis (TB) treatment, potentially making it easier for patients to complete therapy. The researchers aim to shift TB drug development toward creating new drugs from the start to work in the combinations needed to cure TB. 

Though a course of antibiotics, when completed, can cure the infectious...

The biologic drug interferon-alpha can benefit patients with blood cancers called myeloproliferative neoplasms by forcing mutant blood stem cells to become shorter-lived white blood cells, according to a study by Weill Cornell Medicine investigators. Because the broad activity of interferon-alpha can induce significant side effects, developing new focused strategies based on these mechanistic findings could meet an important need in cancer therapy.

Metabotropic glutamate receptors, which are important but difficult drug targets, interact in surprisingly varied ways with their principal regulatory proteins, according to two new studies led by Weill Cornell Medicine investigators. The findings represent a big step forward in understanding these receptors and how they can be targeted effectively to potentially treat conditions such as epilepsy, depression, and anxiety disorders.

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Weill Cornell Medicine and Rutgers Health in New Brunswick have received a four-year, $3 million grant from the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) to build the infrastructure and resources that will accelerate discoveries about HIV-associated brain injury. The New York-New Jersey Center for Actionable NeuroHIV Biomarkers (NYJ-CAN-BIO) will provide the expertise, training and latest technologies needed to understand how HIV impacts the brain. This research center could uncover...

Contrary to some predictions, the use of artificial intelligence (AI) agents could lead to more, not fewer, health care professionals working in the United States, according to a new article by a physician and health policy researcher at Weill Cornell Medicine who surveyed economic theory and the history of technology in health care.

Obesity caused by disrupted stress-hormone rhythms is metabolically very different from obesity caused by a high-fat diet, according to a new preclinical study by Weill Cornell Medicine investigators. The researchers found in mice that glucocorticoid-rhythm disruption concentrates insulin resistance in skeletal muscle while preserving key insulin responses in fat tissue and liver. This allows fat tissue to continue storing lipids, while the liver remains largely protected from the fat...