Dear Friends & Members of the Englander Institute,

I hope you enjoy this abbreviated edition of the EIPM Director's Memo. There was a lot of content in the previous edition that covered May and the first two weeks of June, but there is still plenty to read and enjoy here. 

Thank you again for your continued hard work and dedication to our mission, and best wishes for a fun & relaxing holiday weekend!

Sincerely,

Olivier Elemento, Ph.D.


News Coverage & Awards
In case you missed it, EIPM member Pinkal Desai, M.D. recently earned the Jeanne and Herbert Siegel Faculty Development Award! The prize recognizes an early-career faculty member for exemplary clinical and research contributions, as well as teaching and mentoring medical students.

Dr. Ekta Khurana received a $1.2M federal grant to develop advanced tools that analyze patients’ DNA for markers of a treatment-resistant type of prostate cancer. Dr. Khurana and her team are also using machine learning tools to scan patients’ DNA and identify specific proteins in SCL tumor cells that drive the disease. This approach may help detect treatment resistance in real time. Learn more about her important work in a recent Cornell Chronicle news article!

The Cornell Chronicle and the WCM Newsroom published interviews with our EIPM colleague Dr. Dan Landau about his new paper in Cell "Single-cell mapping of regulatory DNA-protein interactions." Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News and Bioengineer also covered Dr. Landau's new paper. Finally, Dr. Landau also just earned a Lotus Award from the Pershing Square Foundation for research aimed at uncovering new immunotherapy targets in ovarian cancer!

Dr. Manish Shah reports that "A breakthrough in pancreatic cancer, a novel combination for liver cancer, the role of observation in colorectal cancer, and an antibody-drug conjugate in esophageal cancer are among advances in gastrointestinal cancers presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) 2026." MedScape, June 23rd. 

Dr. Jonathan Zippin is working on an innovative approach to treating grey hair. On June 22nd The TODAY show took a closer look at immunotherapy treatments that may reactivate the stem cells crucial coloring hair.

Great new Cancer Screening article in Weill Cornell Medicine's Impact magazine, "The ultimate goal is to facilitate prevention and early detection, which ultimately are the most important factors for prognosis, said EIPM Member Dr. Ravi Sharaf!

EIPM Member Dr. Silvia Formenti, Chair of the Department of Radiation Oncology and the Meyer Cancer Research, earned the Robert F. Kallman Award by Stanford University. The award, and accompanying memorial lecture, is a prestigious honor in radiation oncology and biology presented by Stanford’s Department of Radiation Oncology. It recognizes outstanding scientific excellence, academic leadership and contributions to the profession.

Congratulations to Cancer Therapeutics program and EIPM member Dr. Eleni Andreopoulou on earning an Honorary Professor of Medicine from her alma mater at the University of Ioannina (UoL) Medical School in Greece in recognition of her contributions to teaching and mentorship. Dr. Andreopoulou is the first woman to receive this designation, which honors distinguished, multifaceted, and longstanding contributions to education, research, and the advancement of healthcare in the service of human wellbeing. Interesting note: "The robes are hand embroidered and the motifs are inspired by antiquities. The UoI campus is near the renowned ancient theater and oracle of Dodoni 3rd century B.C."

Congratulations to Dr. Caiquan Jin, a postdoc in the lab of our Chief Research Officer Dr. Bishoy Faltas, who earned a 2026 Bladder Cancer Advocacy Network (BCAN) Young Investigator Award!


Events
We thank everyone who presented departmental talks in June including:

• Some 19 speakers participated in our "Artificial Intelligence for Basic Research in Medicine and the Life Sciences," on June 1-2. 
• "AI Workflows: Promise and Pitfalls," by Dr. Zachary Grinspan, Vice Chair of Health Data Science & Director of Pediatric Epilepsy Research at Weill Cornell Medicine on June 17th. 
• Our EIPM colleague Dr. Ashish Saxena co-delivered WCM Dept. of Medicine Grand Rounds June 23rd on lung cancer, recapping highlights from the American Society of Clinical Oncology 2026 Annual Meeting.
• "Liquid Biopsies for Breast Cancer," by Dr. Jenna V. Canzoniero from the Johns Hopkins Sidney Kimmel Cancer Center on June 25th.
• "Responsible AI in Healthcare: From RWE to Agentic Systems," by Dr. Nigam H. Shah from the Stanford Center for Biomedical Informatics Research on June 30th.

Publications
"AI systems devise hypotheses and ways to test them. AI agents collaborate to generate biomedical hypotheses and analyse data, moving towards a laboratory discovery cycle with AI involved in every step," was published as a News & Views article in Nature on June 30th by EIPM Director Olivier Elemento, Ph.D. 

"Enhancing the quality and trustworthiness of large language model-generated summaries of clinical oncology literature," was published in JAMIA Open on June 16th by Clinical Director Dr. Cora N. Sternberg with Dr. Andrea Sboner from the Pathology and Laboratory Medicine department and the EIPM. 

"An International Survey Among Attending Urologists on the Term High-Grade Prostatic Intraepithelial Neoplasia: Advocating for Removal of ‘High-Grade’ From the Surgical Pathology Report," was published in the International Journal of Urology on May 29th by Dr. Juan Miguel Mosquera from the Pathology and Laboratory Medicine department and the EIPM.

"Patient-derived organoids across cancers reveal conserved tumor heterogeneity and actionable therapeutic vulnerabilities," was published in Science Advances on June 26th by EIPM colleagues Hui-Hsuan Kuo, Bhavneet Bhinder, Kathryn Gorski, Jyothi Manohar, John Otilano, Jenna Moyer, Marvel 
Tranquille, Sarah Ackermann, Jared Capuano, Cynthia Cheung, Thomas A. Caiazza, Phoebe L. Reuben, Anastasia Murray Tsomides, Adriana, Irizarry, Michael Sigouros, Abigail King, Troy Kane, Joonghoon Auh, Florencia P. Madorsky Rowdo, Enrique Podaza, Valerie Gallegos, John Nguyen, Rachel Simmons, Evelyn Cantillo, Jennifer Marti, Elizabeth Popa, Elouise Chapman-Davis; Drs. Peter Waltman, Raehash Shah, Manish Shah, Allyson Ocean, Daniela Guevara, Nasser Altorki, Ana M. Molina, David Wilkes, Lisa Newman, Ashish Saxena, Scott T. Tagawa, Jonathan H. Zippin, Rohit Chandwani, David Nanus, Director of Innovation Alicia Alonso, Clinical Director Cora N. Sternberg, Chief Research Officer Bishoy M. Faltas, and Director Olivier Elemento; and from the EIPM and Pathology and Laboratory Medicine departments: Pooja Chandra, and Drs. Majd Al Assaad, Wael Al Zoughbi, Kentaro Ohara, Director of Research Pathology Juan Miguel Mosquera, and Director of Informatics and Computational Biology Andrea Sboner. 

"Spatial Proteomics Reveals Dual-Compartment Immune Evasion Architecture and Core Lymphomagenic Stromal Niches in Follicular Lymphoma," was published as a bioRxiv preprint on June 11th by EIPM Director Olivier Elemento, Ph.D., Hiranmayi Ravichandran and colleagues. And on June 28th OncoDaily reprinted a LinkedIn post by EIPM Director Olivier Elemento, Ph.D., "The Largest Spatial Proteomic Atlas of Follicular Lymphoma Yet Built."

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