October 4, 2024
Dear Friend of the Englander Institute for Precision Medicine,
Welcome to our third quarterly external newsletter of 2024!
Thank you for signing up on our website to receive this newsletter, we hope you enjoy learning more about the important progress we've made towards our mission since the end of March.
It's been a remarkably productive quarter, with new awards & grants to researchers, new clinical trials initiated, news media coverage of our colleagues, exciting events, and published research in top-tier scientific journals. A sample of this work is highlighted below.
This important work is only possible because of the financial support we receive from foundations, government agencies, corporate partners, and individual donors. We invite you to consider donating to our mission to advance science and speed new treatments to patients.
Thank you again for your interest in our work!
Sincerely,
Olivier Elemento, Ph.D.
EIPM Director
News Coverage & Awards 
We hope you'll congratulate Dr. Bishoy Faltas, our Chief Research Officer, on earning a $300,000 2024 Research Innovation Award from the Bladder Cancer Advocacy Network! Dr. Faltas also provided the Expert Commentary "Efficacy of FGFR Inhibitor Derazantinib in Metastatic Urothelial Carcinoma," published in UroToday on July 8th.
News coverage of Dr. Lisa Newman earning The Gianni Bonadonna Breast Cancer Award that acknowledges her dedication and contributions to the field of global oncology continued with a story in the July 2024 edition of The Oncology Times.
WNBC New York aired an inspiring story on July 14th, "An EagleScout designs VR headsets using AI for use by very sick children," about a young man who used his tech skills to help children in the same hospitals where his brother died of cancer, and featuring our colleague Dr. Jeffrey Greenfield.
"Olivier Elemento’s Vision for Mainstreaming Precision Medicine," was published by Cure on August 5th. 
Dr. Pinkal Desai's recent paper in Cancer, "Association of clonal hematopoiesis and mosaic chromosomal alterations with solid malignancy incidence and mortality," was covered by Medscape in their September 5th article "Do Clonal Hematopoiesis and Mosaic Chromosomal Alterations Increase Solid Tumor Risk?" Dr. Desai was also interviewed by The Video Journal of Hematology and Hematological Oncology at the Society of Hematologic Oncology’s Congress to discuss the complexities and evolving treatment options for secondary acute myeloid leukemia.
Our Chief Research Officer Dr. Bishoy Faltas provided the Expert Commentary, "The Feasibility and Efficacy of Multiparametric MRI for Staging Bladder Cancer," to UroToday on September 19th. 
"Computational Approach Yields Novel Cancer Targets," Human ‘Molecular Map’ Contributes to the Understanding of Disease Mechanisms," published by the Weill Cornell Medicine Newsroom on September 6th covering new research by our colleague Dr. Ekta Khurana and colleagues.
Dr. Karsten Suhre was interviewed for the September 11th Science Daily article "Human 'molecular map' contributes to the understanding of disease mechanisms," on recent research he authored in Nature Communications. 
Congratulations to the EIPM's Associate Director of Precision Immunology Dr. Laura Santambrogio on earning the Masin Family Award for Collaborative Research. She also earned an NIH contract for Epitope Discovery that provides funding to identify T cell epitopes recognized by CD4 and CD8 T cells with particular emphasis on autoimmune diseases.
Events
Our EIPM colleague Dr. Jonathan Zippin will present on melanocyte biology at the 2024 Annual Pan American Society for Pigment Cell Research on September 9th at Cornell Tech!
Our inaugural Bridge2AI Voice Summer School class! Students spent the summer with co-program leader Dr. Anaïs Rameau from WCM's Sean Parker Institute for the Voice and EIPM faculty conducting independent research and presented to their cohort, participating Bridge2AI sites, and more. Click here to learn more about their summer!
The annual EIPM/Meyer Cancer Center Summer Program recently concluded, and we'd like to congratulate all of the participants including Mayar and Nora from Hunter College (right), as well as the program coordinators, mentors and faculty who again gave so generously of their time!
Dr. Elemento presented "Genomes, Avatars and AI: The Future of Personalized Medicine," at the NCI's Center for Cancer Research Bioinformatics Training and Education Program on August 8th. 
Dr. Alicia Alonso, the EIPM's Director of Innovation, presented a WCM Research Cores Seminar, "Advancing techniques in Spatial Genomics Profiling," on September 17th.
Dr. Pinkal Desai presented "Secondary AML- Best Therapeutic Strategy," during the twelfth annual meeting of the Society of Hematologic Oncology on September 4th, which was covered by The Oncology Learning Network in a September 5th article, "Challenges of Treating Secondary Acute Myeloid Leukemia With Standard Therapies."
Dr. Bishoy Faltas spoke at a Plenary Session during the Legorreta Cancer Center Annual Membership Retreat on September 19th at Brown University. 
Clinical Director Dr. Cora N. Sternberg presented two well-received posters during the ESMO 2024 conference in September. This work was covered in the September 17th UroToday article "ESMO 2024: Evaluation of Event-Free Survival as a Surrogate Endpoint for Overall Survival in Muscle-Invasive Bladder Cancer Following Neoadjuvant Therapy."
Dr. Jonathan Zippin co-hosted and presented at the 2024 Annual Pan American Society for Pigment Cell Research meeting, the premier meeting for scientists and clinicians interested in pigmentation and melanocyte research, held September 9-12th on the Cornell Tech campus.
Publications
"Multi-parametric atlas of the pre-metastatic liver for prediction of metastatic outcome in early-stage pancreatic cancer," was published in Nature Medicine on July 2nd by Hiranmayi Ravichandran, myself and WCM colleagues.
"A mitochondrial checkpoint to NF-κB signaling," was published in Cell Death & Disease on July 3rd by Dr. Lorenzo Galluzzi and colleagues.
"Association of clonal hematopoiesis and mosaic chromosomal alterations with solid malignancy incidence and mortality," was published in Cancer on July 16th by Dr. Pinkal Desai, Zichan Li, and colleagues.
"Treatment intensification with novel hormonal therapy in castration-sensitive prostate cancer: Patient identification and clinical rationale," was published in Clinical Genitourinary Cancer by Clinical Director Dr. Cora N. Sternberg and colleagues on July 23rd. 
"A roadmap to the molecular human linking multiomics with population traits and diabetes subtypes. The authors report on integrating 18 diverse deep molecular phenotyping (omics-) technologies applied to urine, blood, and saliva samples from 391 participants of the multiethnic diabetes Qatar Metabolomics Study of Diabetes." Nature Communications on August 19th by Dr. Karsten Suhre and colleagues.
"Automatic ploidy prediction and quality assessment of human blastocysts using time-lapse imaging," was published in Nature Communications on September 5th by EIPM colleagues Iman Hajirasouliha, Director Olivier Elemento, Suraj Rajendran, Matthew Brendel, Josue Barnes, Pantelis Zisimopoulos, Alexandros Sigaras. 
"Discovery of therapeutic targets in cancer using chromatin accessibility and transcriptomic data. Recent technological advances enable the use of assay for transposase-accessible chromatin with sequencing and RNA sequencing on patient tissue in a high-throughput manner. Here, we present a computational approach that leverages these datasets to identify drug targets based on tumor lineage," was published in Cell Systems by Dr. Ekta Khurana and WCM colleagues on September 18th.
"Single-cell chromatin accessibility reveals malignant regulatory programs in primary human cancers. Deep learning models suggest that inherited or cancer-specific mutations can affect important gene-regulatory elements adjacent to, and possibly regulating, key cancer-causing genes," was published in Science by Dr. Ekta Khurana and colleagues on September 6th. 
"Defining heritability, plasticity, and transition dynamics of cellular phenotypes in somatic evolution," was published in Nature Genetics by Dr. Dan Landau and colleagues on September 24th. The research was also featured in a WCM Newsroom article, "New Tool Quantifies Cancer’s Ability to Shape-Shift," on September 24th.
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