CUIMC Update - February 12, 2025

February 12, 2025

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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

Albany Day Gives Students a Chance to Advocate for Health
Twenty-three Columbia students traveled to Albany in early February to get hands-on experience in the state legislature, where they learned about the legislative process and advocated for health policies they care about.

Fabrizio’s Story: Surgery Keeps Soccer Player’s Dream Alive
When a knee injury threatened to obstruct 17-year-old Fabrizio’s soccer career, Columbia orthopedic surgeon Lauren Redler got him back in the game.

Self-Collected HPV Test: A New Option for Cervical Cancer Screening
Cervical cancer is one of the most preventable cancers, but one in five people are not getting regularly screened. Columbia gynecologic oncologist June Y. Hou breaks down the new guidelines on self-collected HPV testing as an option for cervical cancer screening and its potential impact on cervical cancer prevention.

PTSD Continues to Impact Health of Vietnam Veterans
Studies from Mailman School of Public Health researchers find that PTSD and combat exposure are linked to cardiovascular disease, chronic illness, and ongoing psychological distress in Vietnam veterans 50 years after their service.

Events

Grants

Mailman School of Public Health

  • Sandra Albrecht, Epidemiology
    $460,844 over two years from the National Institute on Aging for "Life-course acculturation trajectories and dementia in a multi-ethnic cohort of older adults: The MESA Acculturation and Dementia Study."
  • Darby Jack, Environmental Health Sciences
    $395,302 over five years for a subaward from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences for "The Ghana Randomized Air Pollution and Health Study (GRAPHS) Cohort."

Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons

  • Melissa Arbuckle, Psychiatry
    $300,000 over five years from the New York State Office of Mental Health for "Psychiatric Residency Training at New York State Psychiatric Institute (General Adult)."
  • Dietrich Egli, Naomi Berrie Diabetes Center
    $3,448,858 over five years from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development for "Causes and Consequences of DNA Replication Stress in the Mammalian Preimplantation Embryo."
  • Benjamin Izar, Medicine
    $1,250,000 over five years from the Cancer Research Institute for "Enhancing cellular cancer immunotherapies through massively parallel discovery of novel protein variants coupled with functional single-cell multi-omics."
  • Stavroula Kousteni, Physiology & Cellular Biophysics
    $3,248,581 over five years from the National Institute on Aging for "Epigenetic deregulation of osteoblasts promotes age related clonality in hematopoietic cells."
  • Syeda Imama Naqvi, Neurology
    $1,136,708 over five years from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke for "Optimizing Telehealth To Improve Secondary Stroke Prevention."
  • Alexander Sobolevsky, Biochemistry & Molecular Biophysics
    $452,375 over two years from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke for "Molecular regulation of Kainate receptors."
  • A. Benjamin Srivastava, Psychiatry
    $972,000 over five years from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism for "Neural mechanisms of anxiety during early and protracted abstinence in alcohol use disorder."
  • Nan Wang, Medicine
    $2,698,564 over four years from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute for "Atherothrombosis in JAK2V617F clonal hematopoiesis."
  • Shan Zha, Institute for Cancer Genetics
    $2,148,780 over five years from the National Cancer Institute for "The role of ATM in the suppression of lymphoid malignancy."

Honors

  • Helen B. Gomez Slagle, Obstetrics & Gynecology
    Received the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine Excellence in Research award for her work titled "Intramuscular Methylergonovine to Decrease Blood Loss During Cesarean Delivery for Twins: A Placebo-Controlled, Randomized Trial."

Social Media Snapshot

Columbia Medicine | 🫀This #HeartMonth, we’re kicking things off with expert-approved #GameDay food tips to keep your heart in championship shape!

In the News Highlights

  • New Type of Brain Cell May Tell Us When to Stop Eating
    Feb 5, 2025
    New Scientist
    “The major question that we were seeking to answer was how the brain senses and responds to different signals,” says Alexander Nectow at Columbia University in New York. To study what these cells are sensing to kick them into action, the researchers measured their activity as the mice went about their day. “Every time the animals went for a bite of food, the activity ramped up and then decayed,” says Nectow.
  • You Might Have a Spoon's Worth of Microplastics - in Your Brain.
    Feb 3, 2025
    USA TODAY
    The quality of the research was extremely good, said Gary Miller, a professor of environmental health sciences at Columbia University, who was not involved in the research. These kinds of studies, especially on human brains, are difficult and require great care to ensure that there's been no contamination of the tissue, he said. "This was a very well-conducted study with excellent technique that clearly demonstrates these things are in people's brains," he said.
  • Fidgeting at Your Desk? Your Body May Be Trying to Tell You Something
    Feb 2, 2025
    NPR Online
    Researcher Keith Diaz and his team at Columbia University Irving Medical Center, in partnership with our colleagues at Body Electric, set out to find the least amount of movement you need to counteract the dangers of prolonged sitting. "We found that a five-minute walk every half hour offset a lot of the harms of sitting," Diaz says.