Dear Members of the Englander Institute,
We’ve had a number of visitors recently, including: Dr. Khalid Fakhro, Chief of Research and Director of Precision Medicine at Sidra Medicine in Qatar (right); Dr. Taha Merghoub from Memorial Sloan Kettering; New York City Council Member Julie Menin; Charlie Roberts, the co-founder of Freenome; Philippe Etienne, the Ambassador of France to the United States; and Gilles Bloch, the CEO of Inserm (the French NIH). These visitors toured the EIPM labs and offices to learn more about what we do and came away very impressed by what they saw. I’d like to thank our EIPM colleagues who have taken time out of their busy schedules to participate in these tours.
Thanks to everyone who attended ASCO2022 this year, including Drs. Bishoy M. Faltas, Pashtoon Kasi, David Nanus, Manish Shah, Jones Nauseef, Ashish Saxena, Scott T. Tagawa, Massimo Cristofanilli and others, who presented research and led discussions around a wide range of precision medicine-related topics.
Last week we held the kickoff for the joint Meyer Cancer Center/EIPM summer 2022 internship program for STEM students! The students will participate in sessions on cancer genomics, epidemiology, health disparities, and more. Thanks to all of our colleagues who are volunteering to mentor and train the next generation of researchers.
Life is about balance, that’s why I was happy to see many of our colleagues attended a New York Yankees baseball game together on June 14th and watch the Bronx Bombers beat Tampa Bay 2-0!
We have a number of exciting career opportunities we are hoping to fill soon, including openings for a Bioinformatics Analyst, Senior Software Engineer & Front End Developer. Thank you in advance for sharing these opportunities within your professional networks.
Thank you for your hard work and continued dedication to our mission.
Sincerely,
Olivier Elemento, Ph.D.
News Coverage & Awards
Drs. Monica Guzman and Gail Roboz were featured in a Weill Cornell Medicine Newsroom article on June 2nd about their new study in Nature Communications about a new cell therapy, now being tested in phase 1 clinical trials, that may ultimately help patients with AML to remain cancer-free.
Dr. Kristy A. Brown was interviewed by the Video Journal of Oncology, providing an overview of the impact of obesity on breast cancer penetrance in hereditary cancers, highlighting the role of adipose-derived factors and whether they can modify risk of developing cancer in these women during last month’s American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting in New Orleans, LA.
Congratulations to our colleague Dr. Iman Hajirasouliha on his promotion last month to Associate Professor!
Dr. Lisa Newman was interviewed for the story, “Racial minorities have higher death rates from cancer than white patients, study shows,” that aired on ABC News on June 8th. Dr. Newman was also chair of the AACR Cancer Disparities Progress Report 2022 steering committee, whose new report tracks progress in addressing cancer health disparities and identifies work that still needs to be done. This report was covered by Cancer Today Magazine in an article entitled, “A Look at Disparities Across Cancer Care,” published by June 15th; and in the article “Cancer Disparities Represent Ongoing Public Health Challenge,” published in Renal & Urology News on June 27th.
Dr. Bishoy M. Faltas published a number of Expert Commentary pieces in UroToday recently, including “Risk-Adapted Oncologic Surveillance Post-Radical Nephroureterectomy for High-Risk Upper-Tract Urothelial Carcinoma,” on June 16th; “High-Throughput Screening Identifies Clofarabine as a Potential Treatment for Bladder Cancer,” on June 22nd; “STAG2 Expression as a Prognostic Marker in Bladder Cancer,” on June 23rd; and “Predictive Biomarkers for Ramucirumab Response in Patients with Urothelial Cancer,” on June 28th.
Research presented at ASCO2022 by our Director for Liquid Biopsy Research Dr. Pashtoon Kasi was covered by OBR Oncology in the article “Intermittent Therapy May Improve Progression-Free Survival, Reduce Toxicity in Metastatic Colorectal Cancer,” published on June 17th.
Dr. Marcin Imieliński, associate professor in the Pathology and Laboratory Medicine Department, and a Member of the EIPM, was interviewed for the article “Researchers Develop Algorithm, Assay to Assess Genome Structure,” that appeared in Health IT Analytics on June 28th.
Events
\Our Associate Director for Precision Immunology Dr. Laura Santambrogio was invited to give two talks at the American Association of Immunologists (AAI) meeting in Portland, OR. She was also the organizer of the Block Symposium on Antigen Processing and Presentation, also at the AAI meeting. The work performed in her laboratory on the newly discovered 3HKA, published in Nature Communications last July, a biogenic amine with strong immunosuppressive capabilities, and designed analogs, was selected by WCM to be presented at the upcoming annual BIO International Convention in San Diego. BIO is the signature trade convention for all of Pharma and Biotech to learn about ongoing research at US Universities.
Our Scientific Director Dr. Massimo Cristofanilli, the Chief of Breast Medical Oncology and Assoc. Dir. of Precision Medicine at the Meyer Cancer Center, presented a MCC Director’s Seminar Series talk on June 29th.
Dr. Iman Hajirasoulihaand I spoke at the third MLiM inter-campus symposium, “Bridging the Divide: Machine Learning in Medicine 2022,” discussing the future of AI in Medicine on June 6-7.
Dr. Melissa B. Davis presented “Uncovering the Influence of Ancestry in Tumor Biology of Breast Cancer Disparities,” before the Breast Cancer Coalition of Rochester on June 22nd.
Dr. Niroshana Anandasabapathy spoke during the “Balancing Tissue Immunity and Tumor Immune Surveillance Through Dendritic Cell: T Cell Cross-talk,” session of the FOCiS annual meeting on June 22nd.
Dr. David Nanus participated in a panel discussion, “Advances in Prostate Cancer Screening and Treatment,” along with WCM colleagues that was hosted by Schneps Media on June 21st.
Drs. Melissa B. Davis, Massimo Cristofanilli and colleagues attended and presented during the Accelerating Research in Genomic Oncology (ARGO) event on June 14th.
Publications
Clinical Director Dr. Cora N. Sternberg recently co-authored a number of papers, including “Darolutamide and survival in metastatic, hormone-sensitive prostate cancer: a patient and caregiver perspective and plain language summary of the ARASENS trial,” in Future Medicine on June 3rd; “Statin and metformin use and outcomes in patients with castration-resistant prostate cancer treated with enzalutamide: A meta-analysis of AFFIRM, PREVAIL and PROSPER,” in the July 2022 edition of the European Journal of Cancer; “Chromatin profiles classify castration-resistant prostate cancers suggesting therapeutic targets,” in Science on May 27th; “Effects of metformin and statins on outcomes in men with castration-resistant metastatic prostate cancer: Secondary analysis of COU-AA-301 and COU-AA-302,” in the July 2022 edition of the European Journal of Cancer; “Management of Patients with Advanced Prostate Cancer: Report from the Advanced Prostate Cancer Consensus Conference 202,” in the July 2022 edition of European Urology; and “What Experts Think About Prostate Cancer Management During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Report from the Advanced Prostate Cancer Consensus Conference 2021,” in the July 2022 edition of European Urology.
I was happy to collaborate with several of our WCM colleagues on the paper, “Nicotinamide drives T cell activation in the mammary tumor microenvironment,” which appeared in the Journal of Translational Medicine on June 3rd.
Dr. Jones Nauseef, Assistant Professor of Medicine within the Division of Hematology and Medical Oncology, the Sandra and Edward Meyer Cancer Center, and the EIPM, wrote “ASCO 2022: Gene-by-Gene Analysis in the MAGNITUDE Study of Niraparib (NIRA) with Abiraterone Acetate and Prednisone (AAP) in Patients with Metastatic Castration-Resistant Prostate Cancer (mCRPC) and Homologous Recombination Repair (HRR) Gene Alterations,” which was published in UroToday and presented at ASCO2022 on June 7th.
Drs. Lisa Newman and Melissa B. Davis, along with Dr. Rachel Martini from WCM Surgery, published the Perspective “Enhancing the Trajectories of Cancer Health Disparities Research: Improving Clinical Applications of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility,” in Cancer Discovery on June 2nd.
Dr. Peter Martin published “Treatment Outcomes and Roles of Transplantation and Maintenance Rituximab in Patients With Previously Untreated Mantle Cell Lymphoma: Results From Large Real-World Cohorts,” in the Journal of Clinical Oncology on June 28th.
EIPM Scientific Director Dr. Massimo Cristofanilli co-authored “Genomic Landscape of Advanced Solid Tumors in Circulating Tumor DNA and Correlation With Tissue Sequencing: A Single Institution’s Experience,” in Precision Oncology on June 30th.
I was co-author on a new paper, “The GA4GH Phenopacket schema defines a computable representation of clinical data,” in Nature Biotechnology on June 15th.