Weill Cornell Medicine

Join us in celebrating the outstanding members of our community who have recently received awards and honors: 🏆 Dr. Lisa Newman, of Weill Cornell Medicine and NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, was awarded the 2024 Gianni Bonadonna Breast Cancer Award by the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO). 🏆 Dr. Nili Solomonov received the 2024 Theodore Blau Early Career Award from the American Psychological Association. 🏆 Dr. Jedd Wolchok was named a fellow of the Academy of Immuno-Oncology by the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer (SITC). 🏆 Dr. Zhen Zhao was awarded the 2024 IFCC Distinguished Women Scientist Award by the International Federation of Clinical Chemistry and Laboratory Medicine (IFCC). 🏆 Medical student Justin McCaskill was appointed to the American College of Physicians (ACP) Council of Student Members and was selected as the student representative to the American Medical Association. Full announcement: https://bit.ly/3XwNRGL

Following his father, a pioneering heart surgeon, Dr. Michael Kaplitt always knew he wanted to be both a doctor and a scientist. “Ever since I was very young, I've had a curiosity about what causes problems in the human body, and how one could address it,” he says. In a junior high experiment, he fed earthworms egg yolks to see if high cholesterol would give them heart disease -- and that's what happened. Treating patients and doing research are “both equally important parts of my personality,” he says. As executive vice chair of neurological surgery, Dr. Kaplitt combines surgical expertise with advanced training in state-of-the-art stereotactic techniques to treat patients with degenerative brain disorders. “We treat diseases including Parkinson's disease, essential tremor, complex pain, and other things that prevent patients from functioning normally in their daily lives,” he says. It’s exciting “how innovation and technology can change how you practice neurosurgery so you can take questions from the clinic back to your laboratory and vice versa”, he says. To illustrate the speed of innovation in the field, Dr. Kaplitt recalls a firefighter who had a tremor that he treated with deep-brain stimulation early in his Weill Cornell tenure. The technique– groundbreaking at the time–involved surgically implanting an electrode in his brain to stop the tremors. A generation later, Dr. Kaplitt treated the fireman’s son for the same condition with a completely non-invasive ultrasound technique. When he treats patients with focused ultrasound,, “their tremors literally stop instantaneously,” he says. "They go home that evening and they can use a spoon to eat soup. They can drink from a cup. It’s life-changing work. To be among the first to bring these cutting-edge technologies to patients and in some instances, actually develop new treatment approaches is “incredibly satisfying,” he says. Dr. Kaplitt has also been a pioneer in gene therapy, developing the basic techniques now used in most neuroscience labs around the world and performing the first human gene therapy operation for Parkinson’s. He continues to work in his lab at Weill Cornell Medicine on trials to develop gene therapies for Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, complex pain and other conditions. “The most rewarding things are, how relatively quickly you can transform people's lives with the technologies that we bring to bear,” he says. Left to right: Heart surgeons Dr. Edward (Ted) Dietrich, Dr. Martin J. Kaplitt (father -center) and Dr. Michael Kaplitt (son - right) when he was an intern at Weill Cornell Medicine in 1995.

Brain scans of patients repeated over eighteen months revealed a distinct pattern of neuronal interactions that appears to predispose some people to developing depression, according to researchers. The new study, led by Weill Cornell Medicine's Dr. Conor Liston and Dr. Charles Lynch, highlights the potential of a new “deep scanning” approach to better understand which individuals may be susceptible to depression and other neuropsychiatric conditions. The approach may also aid the development of new treatments. After enrolling a handful of patients with diagnosed depression as well as a larger group of unaffected controls, researchers used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to scan their brains dozens of times over several months. The deep scanning approach revealed that in a majority of the volunteers with depression diagnoses, a brain feature called the salience network is nearly two-fold larger than in controls who didn’t experience clinical depression. Full story: https://bit.ly/3ASqcb5

Reflecting on an inspiring orientation week for our new PhD students! 🎓✨ We’re excited to see the incredible contributions you’ll make. Here’s to a successful and enriching journey ahead. Welcome to the Weill Cornell Medicine community! 

Your bones do a lot more than provide structural support and protect your vital organs. Newly discovered stem cells found exclusively in bone may offer insights into conditions such as cancer and Alzheimer’s and point the way to new therapies for various diseases. “The unifying thread running through my lab’s research is that bone is formed by a composite of site-specific stem cells, where each of those stem cells is adapted to meet the needs of their respective locations,” says Dr. Matthew Greenblatt, who leads the research team. “And the flip side of that is, each site-specific stem cell can account for the signature disease processes of those sites.” In addition to offering promise for treatments for skeletal disorders, cancer and Alzheimer’s, the emerging research points to a “bone-brain axis,” with links to neurodegenerative disorders. “The discoveries of these stem cells are allowing us to identify the specific biology underlying diseases that are associated with different parts of the skeleton,” Dr. Greenblatt says, crediting his pioneering team. “Their engagement and passion have translated into tangible discoveries that we think could really make a difference.” Read our latest issue of IMPACT: https://bit.ly/3T846Yj

Going back to school just got a little sweeter! Our campus-wide Staff Equity and Inclusion Council (SEIC) held its second annual backpack drive, with several departments across Weill Cornell Medicine donating supplies. SEIC members packed 120 backpacks and three teacher bundles for three NYC schools. Each student receives a backpack filled with all the necessary supplies, including notebooks, folders, glue sticks, hand sanitizer, a ruler, scissors, a pencil case, pencils, pens, crayons, highlighters, and erasers. What a successful, kind and thoughtful activity from our Weill Cornell Medicine community.

We won't soon forget the wonderful memories we made at last week's White Coat Ceremony! Watch some of our favorite moments with the Class of 2028 and hear the incredible stories that brought them to Weill Cornell Medicine.

A co-institutional team has received a $12.4 million grant to study diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL), the most common form of lymphoma. “This generous grant will allow us to make real advances in understanding lymphoma biology, but it is built on substantial foundations we’ve laid in recent years with our collaborative basic and preclinical research, as well as clinical trials,” Dr. Leandro Cerchietti said. DLBCL represents a significant challenge for cancer biologists because about 40% of patients either don’t respond well to initial chemotherapy or end up relapsing. Response rates also can vary dramatically among different DLBCL subtypes. Led by Dr. Cerchietti of Weill Cornell Medicine and Dr. Christopher Flowers of MD Anderson Cancer Center, projects funded by the National Cancer Institute (NCI) grant will focus on understanding the complex processes that trigger and sustain the disease. Full story: https://lnkd.in/eeT_hRHB