News & Events

While glucose, or sugar, is a well-known fuel for the brain, Weill Cornell Medicine researchers have demonstrated that electrical activity in synapses—the junctions between neurons where communication occurs—can lead to the use of lipid or fat droplets as an energy source.

The study, published July 1 in Nature Metabolism, challenges “the long-standing dogma that the brain doesn’t burn fat,” said principal investigator...

Academic medical centers could transform patient care by adopting principles from learning health systems principles, according to researchers from Weill Cornell Medicine and the University of California, San Diego. In this approach, information from electronic health records, clinical trials and day-to-day hospital operations is analyzed in real-time to uncover insights that continuously improve patient care.

The perspective...

A pretreatment step could help transplanted pancreatic islets survive longer in patients with type 1 diabetes, according to a new preclinical study from Weill Cornell Medicine investigators. One combination of small molecules extended the cells’ lives in female mice, and adding two molecules to the mixture boosted cell survival in male mice.

The findings, published on June 24 in Cell Stem Cell, could allow...

Metastasis. It’s the word cancer patients dread most – and the scan with ominous black spots showing the disease has spread. For too many people, metastatic cancer is kept at bay only for a short time, with chemotherapy and radiation, before the disease returns or the harsh treatments fatally weaken the body.

For more than 20 years,...

A rare gene mutation that delays Alzheimer’s disease does so by damping inflammatory signaling in brain-resident immune cells, according to a preclinical study led by investigators at Weill Cornell Medicine. The finding adds to growing evidence that brain inflammation is a major driver of neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer’s—and that it may be a key therapeutic target for these disorders.

In the...

New research shows that youth who become increasingly addicted to social media, mobile phones or video games are at greater risk of suicidal thoughts, suicide attempts and emotional or behavioral issues. The study, published June 18 in JAMA, was led by researchers at Weill Cornell Medicine, Columbia University and University of California, Berkeley.

Unlike previous studies that focused on total screen time at...

Thousands of bacterial and other microbial species live in the human gut, supporting healthy digestion, immunity, metabolism and other functions. Precisely how these microbes are protected from immune attack has been unclear, but now a study led by Weill Cornell Medicine investigators has found that this immune “tolerance” to gut microbes depends on an ancient bacterial-sensing protein called STING—normally considered a trigger for inflammation. The surprising result could lead to new...

Dr. Teresa Sanchez, associate professor of pathology and laboratory medicine and associate professor of neuroscience in the Feil Family Brain and Mind Research Institute at Weill Cornell Medicine, has been awarded the highly competitive Established Investigator Award from the American Heart Association.

The five-year, $550,000 grant supports mid-career...

Using an algorithm they call the Krakencoder, researchers at Weill Cornell Medicine are a step closer to unraveling how the brain’s wiring supports the way we think and act. The study, published June 5 in Nature Methods, used imaging data from the Human Connectome Project to align neural activity with its underlying circuitry.

Mapping...

At the 12th annual Helen and Robert Appel Alzheimer’s Disease Research Institute Symposium, scientists and clinicians shared their latest research which is advancing how Alzheimer’s disease is diagnosed and treated. Held at Weill Cornell Medicine’s Griffis Faculty Club, the symposium gave investigators and community members the opportunity to learn and ask questions about new directions in neurodegenerative research....

Dr. Arnab Ghosh, assistant professor of medicine at Weill Cornell Medicine, has been selected as an Emerging Leader in Health and Medicine Scholar. The program, part of the National Academy of Medicine, provides opportunities for future health care leaders to collaborate with its members...

A large prospective, randomized clinical trial in patients with advanced breast cancer has found that the use of liquid biopsy blood tests for early detection of a treatment-resistance mutation, followed by a switch to a new type of treatment, substantially extends the period of tumor control compared to standard care.

The SERENA-6 study, published June 1 in the New England Journal of Medicine and presented concurrently...

When cancer spreads from a primary tumor to new sites throughout the body, it undergoes changes that increase its genetic complexity.

A new study from researchers at Weill Cornell Medicine and Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK) provides fresh insights about how cancers evolve when they metastasize — insights that could aid in developing strategies to improve the...

More than three decades ago, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved Bacillus Calmette-Guérin (BCG) as the first immunotherapy against cancer. And it is still used today to treat early-stage bladder cancer.

Now, a team of researchers from Weill Cornell Medicine and Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK) is expanding the understanding of how the...

Four Weill Cornell Medicine investigators received the Ritu Banga Healthcare Disparities Research Awards, recognizing innovative research that will help close care gaps in clinical settings. Endowed through a generous $5 million gift from Board of Fellows member Ritu Banga and her husband, Ajay Banga, each $50,000 award supports projects aimed at improving health outcomes for populations that have historically faced systemic barriers to care.

“It is an honor to help bring to life the...

Researchers at Weill Cornell Medicine have discovered how a parasite that causes malaria when transmitted through a mosquito bite can hide from the body’s immune system, sometimes for years. It turns out that the parasite, Plasmodium falciparum, can shut down a key set of genes, rendering itself “immunologically invisible.”

For six years, Dr. Benjamin Allwein studied to be a scientist at Weill Cornell Graduate School of Medical Sciences, immersed in structural biology and biochemistry. His educational journey investigating proteins involved in metabolism and DNA replication was intellectually rewarding, but it was also bookended by uncertainty and...

Tirzepatide (trade name Zepbound) promoted greater weight loss in individuals with obesity than did semaglutide (trade name Wegovy) in a clinical trial that compared the safety and efficacy of the injectable drugs. In the 72-week trial—led by an investigator at Weill Cornell Medicine and NewYork-Presbyterian and conducted with the University of Texas McGovern Medical School, the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles, the University College Dublin and...

A new artificial intelligence-based method accurately sorts cancer patients into groups that have similar characteristics before treatment and similar outcomes after treatment, according to a study led by investigators at Weill Cornell Medicine. The new approach has the potential to enable better patient selection in clinical trials and better treatment selection for individual patients.

The study, published May 12 in...

Using machine learning technology, a new study has identified three distinct profiles describing social and economic factors that are associated with a higher risk of suicide. Scientists at Weill Cornell Medicine and Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons led the research that showed suicide rates vary significantly across the three clusters and that the patterns differ geographically across the United States.

The...