Dear Members of the Englander Institute,
Thank you all so much for another very successful and productive month!
I hope you enjoy reading about June’s accomplishments, that include new awards, news coverage of our work, abstracts presented at ASCO, recaps of meetings, and impressive publications by a range of our EIPM colleagues!
We are thrilled to welcome participants in the 2023 Summer Program that we administer with our friends from the Meyer Cancer Center! I’d like to thank all of our faculty mentors who give so generously of their time to make this program popular and such a great success every summer.
Thank you again for your hard work and dedication to our mission.
Sincerely,
Olivier Elemento, Ph.D.
News Coverage & Awards
Dr. Jonathan Zippin, Associate Professor of Dermatology and an EIPM Member, earned a WCM 2023 Excellence in Medical Education Award! On a related note, Dr. Jeanyoung Kim, who works with Dr. Zippin as lead on the WCM dermatology precision medicine biobanking effort, earned a 2023 CTSC Pilot Grant Award, with funding beginning July 1st.
Congratulations to Dr. Jones Nauseef, from the Meyer Cancer Center and an EIPM Member, on his 2023 Department of Medicine Young Investigator Award to study, with WGS, localized prostate cancer from American men of African ancestry!
Clinical Director Dr. Cora N. Sternberg was interviewed during ASCO by UroToday discussing “Beyond BRCA-1 and 2: The Impact of the TALAPRO-2 Study on prostate cancer Care.”
Dr. Steve Lipkin was interviewed for the article “The next big advance in cancer treatment could be a vaccine,” that appeared in The Washington Post, June 26th.
Dr. Scott T. Tagawa was interviewed by UroToday for a June 16th story “Exploring Novel Emitter Combinations in Prostate Cancer Research,” on his team’s presentations on a phase one study highlighting the combination of an alpha and beta emitter targeting PSMA in prostate cancer. Dr. Tagawa was also interviewed by Medscape on June 1st for an article, “Maintenance Therapy for Urothelial Carcinoma,” discussing the emerging clinical data supporting maintenance options for patients with locally advanced or metastatic urothelial carcinoma. Finally, Dr. Tagawa was interviewed for the article, “Dr. Tagawa on the Evolution and Selection of PARP Inhibitors in mCRPC,” that appeared in OncLive on June 1st.
The Cornell Chronicle published an article about the EIPM’s recent Biomedical Engineering Symposium we co-hosted with Meinig School of Biomedical Engineering and the Weill Cornell Medicine Brain and Spine Center.
Dr. Ally Ocean was interviewed for the article, “When Certain Chemotherapy Drugs Are in Short Supply,” that appeared in Katie Couric Media on June 13th.
I was interviewed by Mosaic Research on June 15th for a story about their work on Spatial omics, which are poised to deliver major scientific breakthroughs.
Dr. Lisa Newman participated in The Hill’s Cancer Care Access & Equity: Breaking Barriers to Innovation event, sponsored by City of Hope. The event brought together policymakers, health experts, and patient advocates to discuss changes to the cancer care delivery system required to bring proven advancements and tomorrow’s life-saving treatments to more patients today.
Our Director for Liquid Biopsy Research Dr. Pashtoon Kasi was interviewed for the June 6th Daily Mail article, “EXCLUSIVE: Are we on the verge of vaccinating against CANCER? Another promising shot treats two of the deadliest and fastest-rising forms of the disease, early study shows,” about his new KRAS vaccine study.
Dr. Dolores Lamb was interviewed for the article “Are Sperm Counts Really Declining?” that appeared in Scientific American on June 1st.
The EIPM Molecular Aging Institute’s Clinical Director Dr. Pinkal Desai spoke with the Video Journal of Hematological Oncology on June 10th about the mutational complexity in patients with acute myeloid leukemia.
Events
Clinical Director Dr. Cora N. Sternberg presented “Final Results from SAUL, a Single-Arm International Real-World Study of Atezolizumab in Patients with Pretreated Locally Advanced/Metastatic UTC,” at ASCO and was covered by UroToday on June 6th.
Dr. Jonathan Hale Zippin participated in a PanAmerican Society for Pigment Cell Research seminar on June 20th.
Dr. Scott Tagawa presented “PSMAddition: A Phase 3 Trial to Compare Treatment with 177Lu-PSMA-617 + Standard of Care and Standard of Care Alone in Patients with mHSPC,” at ASCO and was covered by UroToday on June 6th.
Our Director for Liquid Biopsy Research Dr. Pashtoon Kasi delivered POET Virtual Molecular Rounds, “Integrating Liquid Biopsies (#ctDNA) Into Clinical Practice,” on June 26th.
Publications
“A multimodal atlas of tumour metabolism reveals the architecture of gene–metabolite covariation. These results provide evidence that gene–metabolite covariation in cellularly heterogeneous tissue arises, in part, from both mechanistic interactions between genes and metabolites, and from remodelling of the bulk metabolome in specific immune microenvironments,” was published in Nature Metabolism by Dr. Jan Krumsiek and colleagues, June 19th.
“Emerging evidence for adapting radiotherapy to immunotherapy,” was published by our EIPM colleague Dr. Lorenzo Galluzzi with Dr. Silvia C. Formenti from the Meyer Cancer Center in Nature Reviews Clinical Oncologyon June 6th.
The Letter, “How I read an article that uses machine learning methods,” was published by myself and colleagues in Blood Advances on June 5th.
Dr. Bishoy Faltas and colleagues published the Research Letter, “A Pilot Study on Hyperthermic Intraperitoneal Chemotherapy after Radical or Partial Cystectomy with Pelvic Lymph Node Dissection for High-risk Muscle-invasive Bladder Cancer,” in European Urology on June 21st.
“Updates on radiotherapy-immunotherapy combinations: Proceedings of 6th annual ImmunoRad conference. Focal radiation therapy (RT) has attracted considerable attention as a combinatorial partner for immunotherapy (IT), largely reflecting a well-defined, predictable safety profile and at least some potential for immunostimulation,” was published in OncoImmunology by our Associate Director for Precision Immunology Dr. Laura Santambrogio and Dr. Lorenzo Galluzzi on June 21st.
“SARS-CoV-2 hijacks p38β/MAPK11 to promote virus replication. This study reveals a unique proviral function for p38β and supports exploring p38β inhibitor development as a strategy toward creating a new class of COVID-19 therapies,” was published in mBio by Dr. Tomer M. Yaron and colleagues on June 22nd.