August 2025 EIPM Director's Memo

Dear Friends & Members of the Englander Institute,

As I shared in the most recent EIPM Weekly News Roundup newsletter, I've always taken the most pride in the high-quality research our colleagues have published in leading peer-reviewed journals. But July was truly something special, with outstanding papers (below) by dozens of our team members. Congratulations to everyone who contributed to the outstanding work!

We are looking for EIPM Journal Club speakers through the end of the year to address topics like precision medicine, genetics, and artificial intelligence in medicine in top tier journals. Please contact Bhavneet Bhinder or Suzanne Jlelaty with questions or ideas. 

Thank you again for your continued hard work and dedication to our mission.

Sincerely,

Olivier Elemento, Ph.D.


News Coverage & Awards 
Clinical Director Dr. Cora N. Sternberg was a featured "Outstanding Author" interview on July 16th by editors from Translational Cancer Research where she explained why publishing is such a high priority for her. "Publishing my research has led to collaboration, recognition, and the opportunity to mentor and inspire the next generation of scientists,” said Dr. Sternberg.

Oncodaily published recent blog posts by EIPM Director Olivier Elemento, PhD.: "A Deep Dive into the Tumor Microenvironment," on July 6th; A Roadmap for AI in U.S. Medicine," on July 15th; the "The Three Pillars Of A Thriving AI Initiative," on July 30th; and "A New Pharma World Order – The Inevitable Rise of Chinese Drug Innovation," was published on July 31st. 

"The ‘Bachelorette’ Star Hannah Brown, 30, & Pancreatic Cancer Survivor Says She and Adam Woolard Are on the Final ‘Countdown’ to Wedding Day." SurvivorNet news article quoting medical oncologist and EIPM Member Dr. Allyson Ocean, July 24th. 

"A $1.1 million grant from the parent-caregiver-led Rare Bird Foundation to Weill Cornell Medicine investigators, including Dr. M. Elizabeth Ross from the Feil Family Brain and Mind Research Institute and the EIPM, is supporting the launch of a natural history study for a rare neurodevelopmental disorder that causes developmental delays and seizures called MEF2C Haploinsufficiency syndrome (MCHS)." Weill Cornell Medicine Newsroom, July 29th.

Director Olivier Elemento, Ph.D. provided an analysis of "Winning the Race: America's AI Action Plan," a comprehensive roadmap for advancing artificial intelligence in the U.S., built on pillars of innovation, infrastructure, and international security." Substack, July 25th. Dr. Elemento also published "The Dawn of the Personal AI Cognitive Core?" on Substack on July 2nd. 

Our Chief Research Officer Dr. Bishoy Faltas provided the Expert Commentary "Circulating Tumor DNA Assay in Non-Muscle-Invasive Bladder Cancer," to UroToday on July 16th. 

The article "Targeting MAPK and PI3K/mTOR pathways halts ovarian cancer growth," was published in Drug Target Review on July 16th, and quoted our colleague Dr. Benjamin Hopkins discussing his recent research published in Cell Reports Medicine (below). The same research paper was covered in news articles by StudyFinds on July 14th and Inside Precision Medicine on July 9th.


Events
The EIPM hosted a Seminar, “Cancer Epigenetics and Epitranscriptomics; from Knowledge to Applications,” presented by Dr. Manel Esteller, Chair of Genetics, School of Medicine at the University of Barcelona on July 22nd. 

Great to host Dr. Parsa Mirhaj (center) from NYU Langone’s Laura and Isaac Perlmutter Cancer Center for his EIPM Precision Medicine Seminar, "Patient Screening and Clinical Trials Matching Using LLMs" on July 17th. Later in the day Dr. Mirhaj and Dr. Adil Ahmed, a machine learning engineer from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine's Department of Medicine to meet our staff and tour of our facilities.

We thank Dr. Elvire Roblin from WCM's Institute for Computational Biomedicine for presenting the EIPM Precision Medicine AI Working Group talk "Leveraging Foundation Modes to Identify Epigenomic Subtypes of Prostate Cancer from Histopathology," on July 18th. 


Publications
The preprint "Comparison of Whole Genome Sequencing with Clinical Targeted Panel Sequencing of Metastatic Prostate Cancer: Insights from Real-World Data," was published in Research Square on July 7th by Drs. Juan Miguel Mosquera and Majd Al Assaad from the Pathology and Laboratory Medicine department and the EIPM, along with our colleagues Alissa Semaan, Dr. David C. Wilkes, Jyothi Manohar, Drs. Daniela Guevara, Olivier Elemento, Scott Tagawa, Ana M. Molina, David M. Nanus, and Cora N. Sternberg. 

Our Associate Director for Precision Immunology Dr. Laura Santambrogio recently published three articles: "Age-dependent brain responses to mechanical stress determine resilience in a chronic lymphatic drainage impairment model," was published in The Journal of Clinical Investigation on July 15th; "Haptenization as the missing link between vasculitis and myeloperoxidase," was also published in The Journal of Clinical Investigation on April 15th; and "Lymphatic messengers: Non-antigen soluble mediators from diseased tissues to draining lymph nodes," was published in the April 2025 edition of the Current Opinion in Immunology. 

"Unlocking the therapeutic potential of rigosertib as a selective therapy for ovarian cancer," was published in Cell Reports Medicine on July 7th by our EIPM colleagues Drs. Shalini Nath and Benjamin D. Hopkins, with Ufuoma Nuwere, Lamberto De Boni, Director Olivier Elemento, Ph.D., and Dr. Majd Al Assaad from the Pathology and Laboratory Medicine department and the EIPM. 

"A foundational model for in vitro fertilization trained on 18 million time-lapse images," was published in Nature Communications by Suraj Rajendran, Eeshaan Rehani, William Phu, Director Olivier Elemento, Ph.D., and Dr. Iman Hajirasouliha. 

"Blackbird: structural variant detection using synthetic and low-coverage long-reads," was published in Bioinformatics Advances, by Dr. Iman Hajirasouliha and colleagues on July 4th.

"SPINK1 Immunohistochemistry: An Ancillary Tool to Diagnose Urothelial Carcinoma in situ and Urothelial Dysplasia," was published in Pathology--Research and Practice on July 28th by Drs. Francesca Khani, Juan Miguel Mosquera, Shaham Beg, Brian D. Robinson, and Kyung Park from the Pathology and Laboratory Medicine department and the EIPM, and colleagues. 

"PD-1 is requisite for skin TRM cell formation and specification by TGFβ. Thus, PD-1 signaling mediates skin TRM cell specification during immune initiation. These findings may inform therapeutic PD-1 agonist and antagonist use to modulate successful peripheral memory." Nature Immunology, July 29th by Drs. Niroshana Anandasabapathy, Akanksha Verma, and Director Olivier Elemento.

"Blood-Epigenetic Biomarker Associations with Tumor Immunophenotype in Patients with Urothelial Carcinoma from JAVELIN Bladder 100," was published in Cancers on July 14th by Clinical Director Dr. Cora N. Sternberg and colleagues. 

"Integrative transcriptomic and single-cell protein characterization of colorectal carcinoma delineates distinct tumor immune microenvironments associated with overall survival," was published in Pathology--Research and Practice on July 28th by Pathology and Laboratory Medicine department & EIPM colleagues Drs. Erika Hissong, Juan Miguel Mosquera, Kentaro Ohara, Majd Al Assaad, Andrea Sboner, EIPM Drs. Andre F. Rendeiro, Allyson J. Ocean, Andrea Sboner, Director Olivier Elemento, Manish A. Shah, Junbum Kim, and EIPM team members Bhavneet Binder, Hiranmayi Ravichandran, Kenneth Wha Eng, Rohan Bareja, Jyothi Manohar, and Michael Sigouros.

"Liquid biopsy in breast cancer: Redefining precision medicine," was published in The Journal of Liquid Biopsy on July 16th by Dr. Carolina Reduzzi and WCM colleagues. 

"Metastatic small cell lung cancer arises from TP53/RB1-deficient and MYC overproduction hESC-derived PNECs," was published in E Life Sciences on July 22nd by Drs. Yajas Shah and Director Olivier Elemento, with WCM colleagues. 

"Pan-cancer immune and stromal deconvolution predicts clinical outcomes and mutation profiles," was published in Scientific Reports on July 4th by Drs. Bhavneet Binder and Director Olivier Elemento, with Kofi Gyan, Aditya Deshpande, and Rohan Bareja.

"Intraindividual epigenetic heterogeneity underlying phenotypic subtypes of advanced prostate cancer," was published in Nature Communications on July 1st by Dr. Juan Miguel Mosquera from the Pathology and Laboratory Medicine department and the EIPM, with EIPM colleagues Michael Sigouros, Jyothi Manohar, and Abigail King.

"Genomic alterations in the YAP/TAZ pathway are associated with stem cell-like castration-resistant prostate cancer," was published in medRxiv on July 2nd by EIPM colleagues Drs. Ekta Khurana, Marjorie L Roskes, Alexander Martinez-Fundichely, Scott Tagawa, David Nanus, Ana Molina, Jones T. Nauseef, and Clinical Director Cora N. Sternberg, with EIPM colleagues Weiling Li, Tonatiuh A Gonzalez, Rohan Bareja, Princesca Dorsaint, Kathryn Gorski, Michael Sigouros, Jyothi Manohar, along with Drs. Majd Al Assaad, Brian D. Robinson, Juan Miguel Mosquera, and Andrea Sboner from the Pathology and Laboratory Medicine department and the EIPM.

#  #  #