CUIMC Update is a weekly e-newsletter featuring medical center news and the accomplishments of our faculty, staff, and trainees.Please send your news, honors, and awards tocuimc_update@cumc.columbia.edu. Grants are provided by the Sponsored Projects Administration office.
News
Medical School Celebrates 2024 Graduates
The VP&S Class of 2024 celebrated graduation with friends and families yesterday. The ceremony honored 142 students who received MD degrees from VP&S and 86 students who received PhD degrees in biomedical sciences from Columbia’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.
Stories from the Class of 2024
Hear from VP&S and Nursing graduates about why they decided to pursue a career in health sciences, their experience entering school during the COVID-19 pandemic, and how their time at Columbia impacted them.
COMBO Playdate Bolsters Family and Community Health
More than 500 community members attended Columbia’s COVID-19 Mother Baby Outcomes (COMBO) Initiative's third annual Playdate, a free event in Washington Heights that offered family-friendly activities, games, prizes, and an introduction to community resources available to families.
Mailman Faculty, Staff, and Students Participate in Inaugural Day of Service
More than 130 students, faculty, and staff volunteered at nine organizations that focus on causes that include food insecurity, support for the elderly, immigration, and community health.
Faster Approach More Effective for Starting Extended-release Injectable Naltrexone
Starting people who have opioid use disorder on injectable, extended-release naltrexone within five to seven days of seeking treatment is more effective than the standard treatment of starting within 10 to 15 days, according to results from a clinical trial led by Columbia researchers.
Events
- Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in Clinical Trials Day
May 20, noon
Vivian and Seymour Milstein Family Heart Center, 173 Fort Washington Ave., Myrna L. Daniels Auditorium - Dialogues on Medical Journalism: Patrick J. Kennedy and Stephen Friedon "Profiles in Mental Health Courage"
May 20, 7 p.m.
Online - Jewish American Heritage Month Celebration
May 21, noon
Haven Plaza, Haven Avenue between Fort Washington Avenue and 169 Street - A Discussion of the Challenges of Successful Neighborhood Recruiting in Washington Heights
May 22, 10:30 a.m.
Online - Dermatology SPOTme Skin Cancer Screening
May 22, 1 p.m.
Herbert Irving Pavilion, 161 Fort Washington Ave., 12th Floor - Cerebral Palsy Community Day
June 8, 11 a.m.
Haven Plaza, Haven Avenue between Fort Washington Avenue and 169 Street - ACE Master Clinician Lecture: Treating Patients Who Lack Capacity Over Objection: Medical, Ethical and Legal Considerations
June 11, 8 a.m.
Online - 1st Annual Cancer Center Symposium: Advancing Cancer Care in Our Community
June 14, 8 a.m.
55 Palmer Avenue, Bronxville, Lobby Conference Room and via Zoom - ColumbiaDoctors Outreach at the Farmers' Market: Skin Cancer
June 18, 10 a.m.
Haven Plaza, Haven Avenue between Fort Washington Avenue and 169 Street - Retractions: On the Rise, But Not Enough
June 18, 4:30 p.m.
Online
Grants
College of Dental Medicine
- Amy Herbert
$250,000 over five years from the New York State Department of Health for "School-Based Dental Home Program."
Mailman School of Public Health
- S. Patrick Kachur, Population & Family Health
$2,500,000 from the Duke (Doris) Charitable Foundation for "Sustaining the African Health Initiative Community of Practice." - Marianthi-Anna Kioumourtzoglou, Environmental Health Sciences
$649,389 over three years for a subaward from the National Institute on Aging for "Historical social and environmental determinants of memory decline and dementia among U.S. older adults." - Sen PeiandWan Yang, Environmental Health Sciences
$324,998 over one year for a subaward from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for "Modeling and forecast of COVID-19 and RSV to inform public health decision making."
School of Nursing
- Rebecca Schnall
$860,287 over two years for a subaward from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases for "Drive to Zero: Developing a digital cohort to understand the drivers of non-sustained viral suppression in the Deep South." - Maxim TopazandJacquelyn Taylor
$2,696,411 over four years from the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities for "Identifying and reducing stigmatizing language in home healthcare: the ENGAGE study."
Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons
- Hashim Al-Hashimi, Biochemistry & Molecular Biophysics
$456,827 over one year from the Office of the NIH Director for "Acquisition of 600 MHz NMR Console, QCI-P CryoProbe and CryoPlatform." - Vanessa Babineau, Obstetrics & Gynecology
$261,684 over two years from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development for "Maternal Childhood Maltreatment-Influenced Prenatal Programming of Early Brain-Behavior and Risk for Future Psychopathology." - Matthew Baldwin, Medicine
$3,554,792 over five years from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute for "Immune, hormonal, and muscle mitochondrial determinants of recovery in Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome Survivors." - Andrea CalifanoandBarry Honig, Systems Biology
$7,236,356 over five years from the National Cancer Institute for "Center for Cancer Systems Therapeutics (CaST)." - Peter Canoll, Pathology & Cell Biology
$463,445 over five years for a subaward from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke for "Fatty acid metabolic regulation of anti-tumor immunity against irradiated glioblastoma." - Carla Concepcion-Crisol, Molecular Pharmacology & Therapeutics
$438,592 over two years from Prelude Therapeutics for "Evaluating SMARCA2 degraders in genetically engineered mouse models of SMARCA4-deficient LUAD." - Riccardo Dalla-Favera, Institute for Cancer Genetics
$6,909,000 over seven years from the National Cancer Institute for "From pathogenesis to new therapeutic targets in Diffuse Large B cell Lymphoma." - Philip De Jager, Neurology
$350,000 over one year from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative for "Human Microglial Single-Cell Reference Taxonomy." - Barry Fine, Medicine
$350,000 over two years from New York Community Trust for "Improving Cellular Resiliency During a Heart Attack." - Angela Gomez-Simmonds, Medicine
$2,438,140 over five years from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases for "Genetic factors associated with phenotypic beta-lactam resistance in extended-spectrum beta-lactamase-producing Enterobacterales." - Gamze Gursoy, Biomedical Informatics
$323,817 over one year from the Office of the NIH Director for "Delineating the functional impact of recurrent repeat expansions in ALS using integrative multiomic analysis." - Matthew Harms,Hemali Phatnani,Frank Provenzano, andNeil Shneider, Neurology
$316,084 over one year for a subaward from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke for "ALSynCC – A Nationwide Network to Bridge ALS Research and Clinical Data." - Shirong Li, Medicine
$750,000 over three years from the Leukemia Research Foundation for "Targeting GCK as a novel and selective therapeutic strategy against RAS mutated Multiple Myeloma." - Joseph John Mann, Psychiatry
$560,175 over five years for a subaward from the National Institute of Mental Health for "Human brain multi-omics to decipher major depression pathophysiology." - Sumit Mohan, Medicine
$1,289,653 over five years from the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases for "APOL1 Long-term Kidney Transplantation Outcomes Network (APOLLO) Clinical Center." - Joshua Motelow, Pediatrics
$1,266,625 over five years from the National Human Genome Research Institute for "Genetic Risk Underlying Pediatric Critical Illness." - Catarina Maria Quinzii, Neurology
$3,318,094 over five years from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke for "Role of SUMOylation in mitochondrial/synaptic axis dysfunction induced by abnormal tau in FTD." - Neil Shneider, Neurology
$250,000 over one year from Massachusetts General Hospital for "ALS Clinical Research C9 ID Fund." - Milton Wainberg, Psychiatry
$2,070,379 over five years from the National Institute of Mental Health for "Global Mental Health (GMH) Research Fellowship: Interventions that Make a Difference." - Timothy Cragin Wang, Medicine
$6,909,000 over seven years from the National Cancer Institute for "The role of stem cells and the microenvironment in gastrointestinal cancers."
Honors
Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons
- Jeffrey W. Moses, Medicine
Will receive theTranscatheter Cardiovascular Therapeutics Geoffrey O. Hartzler Master Operator Awardhonoring his skills and leadership in interventional cardiovascular medicine. - Jon A. Levenson, Psychiatry
Received anOutstanding Faculty Mentor Awardfrom the New York County Psychiatric SocietyResidents' Committee. He also was inducted as aDistinguished Life Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association. - Lorraine Symington,Microbiology & Immunology
Elected to fellowship in theRoyal Society, the UK’s national academy of sciences.
Social Media Snapshot
Columbia Medicine | Congratulations to the #ColumbiaNursing Class of 2024 as they embark on their nursing journeys. 🎓🥳
In the News Highlights
- The Quest for Treatments to Keep Weight Off After Ozempic
May 8, 2024
The Wall Street Journal
There is more at stake than looking better. If people put weight back on, they won’t reap the long-term health benefits that losing pounds provides. “Weight regain is the major problem at this point because it really impacts the long-term success medically or otherwise of weight loss,” saidDr. Rudolph Leibel, a researcher on the genetics and physiology of obesity atColumbia, and a study investigator. - Herbert Pardes, Who Steered the Growth of a Giant Hospital, Dies at 89
May 9, 2024
The New York Times
Dr. Herbert Pardes, a psychiatrist and a former director of the National Institute of Mental Health who brought order to the merger of two major medical centers that becameNewYork-Presbyterian Hospitaland ran it for 11 years, died on April 30 at his home in Manhattan. He was 89.
Dr. Pardes(pronounced par-diss) was named president and chief executive of the hospital in late 1999, nearly two years after the merger of New York Hospital and Presbyterian Hospital. The previous decade he had been the dean of the faculty of medicine at theColumbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, Presbyterian’s affiliated medical school. - Experimental Gene Therapy Restores Some Vision in Patients with Inherited Blindness
May 6, 2024
CNN Online
These new Phase 1/2 trial results provide a “building block” for scientists to work off of in the future when developing gene therapies to treat eye disorders, saidDr. Vlad Diaconita, a retinal surgeon and assistant professor of ophthalmology atColumbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons. He was not involved in the trial.
“We still have to wait a little longer to see if this pans out in the long-term,” saidDr. Aliaa Abdelhakim, an ophthalmologist-geneticist, retina specialist, and assistant professor of ophthalmology atColumbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons. She also was not involved in the trial.
