CUIMC Update - April 17, 2024

April 17, 2024

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CUIMC Update is a weekly e-newsletter featuring medical center news and the accomplishments of our faculty, staff, and trainees. Please send your news, honors, and awards to cuimc_update@cumc.columbia.edu. Grants are provided by the Sponsored Projects Administration office.

News

Accepted Students Visit Campus for “Life at VP&S” Day
More than 150 applicants accepted to VP&S visited campus last week for “Life at VP&S,” an event offering applicants a window into what they can expect if they select VP&S for medical school.

New Password Requirement for CUIMC Users
Access to medical center accounts will soon require the use of 16-character passwords to improve security. All users have 30 days to update their password by enrolling in Self-Service Password Reset, then resetting your password per the new requirements.

Mailman School Leads Efforts to Combat Rising Rates of Sexually Transmitted Infections
April is STI Awareness Month, and the Mailman School of Public Health is taking proactive steps to address the escalating rates of sexually transmitted infections in New York City and beyond with programs led by Alwyn Cohall, MD, professor of pediatrics at VP&S and of sociomedical sciences and population & family health at Mailman.

Adults with Autism: Difficulties and Strengths
People with autism are born with this condition, but receiving a formal diagnosis later in life is not uncommon. David Lynch, PhD, and Liliana Valvano, LMSW, clinicians at Columbia’s Lieber Recovery Clinic, share their insights on some common questions related to experiences of autism across the lifespan.

Events

Grants

Mailman School of Public Health

  • Jeremy Kane, PhD, Epidemiology
    $2,696,906 over three years from the National Institute of Mental Health for "The impact of changes in social determinants of health during the COVID-19 pandemic: A longitudinal study of the Asenze cohort in South Africa."
  • Susan Michaels-Strasser, PhD, ICAP
    $1,420,000 over two years from Resolve To Save Lives for "Epidemic Ready Primary Healthcare (ERPHC): Strengthening Service Delivery and Public Health."

Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons

  • Peter Dayan, MD, Emergency Medicine
    $2,800,000 over four years from the Health Resources and Services Administration for "EMSC Network Development Demonstrations Project (NDDP), Pediatric Emergency Medicine Northeast, West, and South."
  • Lisa Eisler, MD, Anesthesiology
    $961,906 over five years from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences for "Efficacy of Preoperative Oral Iron Supplementation in Adolescents Undergoing Scoliosis Surgery."
  • Barry Fine, MD, PhD, Medicine
    $2,830,428 over five years from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute for "STK25 phosphorylates PRKAR1A to regulate PKA signaling."
  • Robyn Gartrell, MD, Pediatrics
    $658,000 over three years from the Army Medical Research and Materiel Command for "Effect of CD47 on the tumor microenvironment in Diffuse Midline Glioma, a fatal pediatric brain tumor."
  • Robert Goldenberg, MD, Obstetrics & Gynecology
    $3,876,784 over seven years from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development for "Columbia University/Aga Khan University Global Network Research Unit."
  • Rebecca Haeusler, PhD, Medicine
    $2,606,488 over four years from the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases for "Bile acid composition and insulin sensitivity."
  • Suzanne Leal, PhD, Sergievsky Center
    $3,160,887 over five years from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development for "Elucidating the Genetic Etiology of Intellectual Disability in African, Asian, and European Families."
  • Mathew Maurer, MD, Medicine
    $4,150,775 over five years from the National Institute on Aging for "Analysis of Lumbar Spine Stenosis Specimens for Identification of Transthyretin Cardiac Amyloidosis."
  • Nenad Milosavic, PhD, Medicine
    $472,416 over two years from Nutromics for "Nutromics/Milosavic."
  • Charles Schroeder, PhD, Psychiatry
    $388,200 over four years for a subaward from the National Institute of Mental Health for "Active Social Vision: How the Brain Processes Visual Information During Natural Social Perception."
  • Kimara Targoff, MD, Pediatrics
    $2,070,708 over four years from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute for "Mechanisms of outflow tract morphogenesis regulated by extracellular matrix."
  • Moriya Tsuji, MD, PhD, Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center
    $6,450,468 over five years from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases for "A glycolipid adjuvant 7DW8-5 for malaria vaccines."
  • Neil Vasan, MD, PhD, HICCC
    $1,480,500 over three years from the National Cancer Institute for "Base-Editing the Cancer Kinome to Enable Drug Discovery."
  • Hee Won Yang, PhD, Pathology & Cell Biology
    $600,000 over three years from the V Foundation for Cancer Research for "Deciphering mechanisms of RAS inhibitor resistance in NRAS-mutant melanoma."

Honors

Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons

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In the News Highlights

  • Gene Discovery May Lead to Better Alzheimer's Treatments
    Apr 11, 2024
    U.S. News & World Report
    “These resilient people can tell us a lot about the disease and what genetic and non-genetic factors might provide protection,” explained study co-lead author Badri Vardarajan, an assistant professor of neurological science at Columbia University in New York City. "We hypothesized that these resilient people may have genetic variants that protect them from APOEe4," Vardarajan added in a university news release.
    “Alzheimer’s disease may get started with amyloid deposits in the brain, but the disease manifestations are the result of changes that happen after the deposits appear,” noted study co-leader Caghan Kizil, an associate professor of neurological science at Columbia's Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons.
  • How Pregnancy May Speed Up the Aging Process
    Apr 8, 2024
    The Washington Post
    The newest of the studies, published today in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found pregnancy “has a big impact on a woman’s body” and biological age, said Calen P. Ryan, an associate research scientist at the Columbia Aging Center at Columbia University in New York, who led the new research.
  • Breakthrough in Fight Against World's Deadliest Cancer - New Drug Shrunk Up to 70% of Pancreatic Tumors in Lab Study
    Apr 8, 2024
    Daily Mail (UK)
    Dr. Kenneth Olive, a scientist at Columbia University who led the research at his lab, said: "For over four decades, we have known that there’s one particular RAS protein, called KRAS, that’s mutated and drives about 95 percent of all pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma cases, and we’ve had no direct tools to attack it for most of that time."
    Dr. Olive said: "RMC-7977 as a single agent outperformed the best combination regimen that has ever been reported in the literature in that model system," adding that it was the first time he had seen tumors routinely get small across all models.