2026 3Q EIPM Director's Memo
Dear Friends & Members of the Englander Institute,
Welcome to the third quarterly external newsletter of 2026!
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 June. We invite you to also follow our social media channels for our latest news: X/Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Threads, and Bluesky!
It's been a remarkably productive quarter, with new awards & grants to our researchers, new clinical trials initiated, print and broadcast 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 support 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.
News Coverage & Awards
On July 10th the WCM Newsroom wrote an article "Cancer Evolution Study by EIPM Researcher Reveals Biology of Glioma Progression," recapping a recent Nature Genetics paper by Dr. Dan Landau and colleagues. And in August, Dr. Landau was named Inaugural Chair of the Department of Systems and Computational Biomedicine at Weill Cornell Medicine! News of his new appointment was covered by Bioengineer, Crain's New York Business, and GenomeWeb.
A recent paper in Leukemia by Drs. Monica Guzman, Giorgio Inghirami, Shahin Rafii, and the Clinical Director of the EIPM Molecular Aging Institute Dr. Pinkal Desai was featured in the WCM Newsroom article "Mapping Human Bone Marrow Yields New Tool, Insights on Blood Cancer" on July 21st. The research was also covered by news articles in Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News and The ASCO Post.
"Which Cancers Are Still More Deadly in Black vs White Patients? The cancer mortality gap between Black and White individuals in the US has narrowed, but disparities in breast, uterine corpus, and prostate cancer specifically have remained wide or gotten worse, according to a new analysis." Medscape, July 29th with EIPM Member Dr. Lisa Newman.
On August 11th, Dr. Jesus De La More earned a 2026-2027 AI/BigData/Enabling Technologies Seed Grant from the Weill Cornell Medicine/Mastercard Collaborative! Director Olivier Elemento, Ph.D. served as a mentor on this grant, along with the EIPM's Director of Research Pathology Dr. Juan Miguel Mosquera. 
"What if doctors could test cancer treatments on your tumor, without putting a single one of those treatments into your body?" CBS News news story in August featuring our Chief Research Officer Dr. Bishoy Faltas, who was also featured in a recent OncoDaily Voices. 
If you didn't get a chance to meet our 2026 EIPM summer intern Salah, who worked under EIPM Member Alexandros Sigaras MS, Assistant Professor of Research in Physiology and Biophysics in our AI-XR Lab, you can watch our new video about his summer project, challenges overcome, and how his confidence grew over time!
On August 28th Dr. Niroshana Anandasabapathy earned a new $3.5 million NIH grant to study "Anti-PD1 driven tissue pathogenesis, towards preventing and treating irAE toxicity during cancer therapy."
On September 14th our colleague Dr. Zippin earned a new Competing Continuation Award from the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases for his project, "Mechanisms of cAMP-dependent regulation of melanosome pH," $2.75M over 5 years!
"Smart-Start Therapy for Canine B-Cell Lymphoma. Colleagues from Cornell University's College of Veterinary Medicine and New York University are partnering with the EIPM's Dr. Jan Krumsiek on a new trial, "Smart-Start Therapy for Canine B-Cell Lymphoma," to address one of the most common cancers we see in dogs. Cornell University's College of Veterinary Medicine, September 15th. 
"Her son was dying, but his rare cancer made it difficult to get the right drug," a CBS News Health Watch article on September 21st featuring EIPM Director Olivier Elemento, PhD. The same article was republished by Yahoo News, Physicians Weekly, and MedPage Today/KFF Health News.
Congratulations to our colleague Dr. Scott T. Tagawa who has received a $2 million grant from the Department of Defense to lead Weill Cornell Medicine and NewYork-Presbyterian’s participation in the Prostate Cancer Clinical Trials Consortium (PCCTC), part of the DoD’s Prostate Cancer Research Program. Dr. Tagawa was also interviewed for the Every Day Health article "How to Decode Your PSMA-PET Scan and Track Your Metastatic Prostate Cancer Treatment Progress," that ran September 23rd. 
"FDA panel endorses first-of-a-kind cancer blood test from Grail. The Galleri test doesn’t diagnose cancer but instead, with a single blood draw, looks for a signal that someone may have one of a long list of tumors. Those who receive a positive result need additional care to tell if they’re really sick." Associated Press, September 23rd. Congratulations to our Clinical Director Dr. Cora N. Sternberg for serving as WCM's PI on this research.
Events
On July 31st, The EIPM wrapped up the wet lab's #SpritWeek with fun bonding activities like Pajama Day, the Lab Olympics featuring games and sporty (but appropriate) summer attire, and Fancy Day featuring cocktail attire (image right) and a post-work happy hour!
On August 20th our friends at OncoDaily promoted one of our tweets, "Precision Medicine Seminar Featuring Presentations by Benjamin Hopkins and Stefano Cirigliano." 
After Dr. Eleni Andreopoulou became the first woman to earn an Honorary Professor of Medicine award from the University of Ioannina Medical School in Greece this summer, we sat down with her on August 7th to learn more about our EIPM colleague, her career in breast oncology, thoughtful opinions on AI, and her fascinating professional journey from Greece to London and on to New York City!
Dr. Niroshana Anandasabapathy presented a Meyer Cancer Center Cancer Genetics and Epigenetics Research Program Meeting "PD-1 and CD8+ TRM: A Smoking Gun in irAE and Anti-Tumoral Efficacy," on Sept. 4th.
On September 23rd our Director of Informatics and Computational Biology Dr. Andrea Sboner presented "Clinical Bioinformatician Body of Knowledge—Bioinformatics and Software Core," to provide an in-depth overview of the Clinical Bioinformatician Body of Knowledge (BoK) developed by the Association for Molecular Pathology.
Also on September 23rd, our Senior Research Associate Bhavneet Bhinder, MS presented an EIPM AI Clinic, “Making AI Working with Your Own Knowledge - How RAG Helps Researchers and Clinicians Get Better Answers."
On September 15th our Director of Ex Vivo Models Dr. Ben Hopkins (image right) & Assistant Professor of Research in Neuroscience Dr. Stefano Cirigliano (second from left) presented an EIPM Precision Medicine Seminar!
Publications
"Intravesical mesothelin-based CAR T cells targeting MUC16 effectively control bladder cancer in preclinical models," was published in the Journal of Experimental Medicine on July 6th by Alyssa Duren-Lubanski, our Chief Research Officer Bishoy Faltas, M.D., Director Olivier Elemento, Ph.D., our Director of Ex Vivo Models Benjamin D. Hopkins, Ph.D., and colleagues.
"LEF1 and niche factors determine T cell stemness across chronic diseases," was published in Cell on July 9th by EIPM Member Dr. Doron Betel and colleagues.
A July 13th paper in Nature Communications, "A quantitative approach for defining the degradability landscape of protein degraders," by Drs. Elemento, Wei Du, Lamberto De Boni and Benjamin David Hopkins was featured in a WCM Newsroom article and in a recent Cornell Chronicle article. And Dr. Elemento provides additional context to this research in his LinkedIn post. 
"Comparison of whole genome sequencing with clinical targeted panel sequencing of metastatic prostate cancer: insights from real-world data," was published in npj Precision Oncology on July 25th by Dr. Juan Miguel Mosquera from the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine and the EIPM's Director of Research Pathology; with Pathology & EIPM colleagues Majd Al Assaad, Alissa Semaan, Jesus Delgado-de la Mora, Eda Nur Kozan; and EIPM's David C. Wilkes, Jyothi Manohar, Daniela Guevara, Christina Fedorov, Scott Tagawa, Ana M. Molina, David M. Nanus, Jones T. Nauseef, Clinical Director Cora N. Sternberg, and Director Olivier Elemento, Ph.D. 
"A compendium of next-generation patient-derived models for diverse cancers," was published in Nature on August 5th by Director Olivier Elemento, Ph.D., our Director of Research Pathology Dr. Juan Miguel Mosquera, and colleagues.
"Deep learning–based histologic classifiers enable molecular subtyping of metastatic prostate cancer," was published in JCI Insight on August 6th by Dr. Daniela Guevara, Chantal Chanel-Vos, Christina Fedorov, John R. Otilano, Troy Kane, Jyothi Manohar, Michael Sigouros, Drs. Jones T. Nauseef, Ana Molina, David Nanus, Scott T. Tagawa, our Director of Research Pathology Juan Miguel Mosquera, andClinical Director Cora N Sternberg.
"A Conversational Ethics Bot (CALEB) Versus GPT-4o for Medical Ethics Education: Transcript Analysis and Extended Reality Feasibility Study," was published in The Journal of Medical Extended Reality by Alexandros Sigaras and Sandhya Sriram.
"Role of orphan G protein-coupled receptor GPR52 in breast cancer cell multicellular organization and collective invasion," was published in the British Journal of Cancer on August 20th by EIPM Director Olivier Elemento, PhD, Bhavneet Bhinder, MS and colleagues.
"Reply to: Radiographic Progression With and Without Prostate-Specific Antigen Rise in Patients With Advanced Prostate Cancer Treated With Enzalutamide," was published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology on July 31 by our Clinical Director Dr. Cora N. Sternberg and colleagues.
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