CUIMC Update - June 21, 2023
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
Essential Tremor Affects Millions, But Columbia's Division of Functional Neurosurgery Offers Hope
For people with essential tremor, a movement disorder that causes people’s arms, hands, and heads to shake uncontrollably, the activities of daily life can be extremely difficult, if not impossible. Columbia neurosurgeon and co-chief of the functional neurosurgery division Gordon Baltuch, MD, PhD, is one of a few surgeons in the United States experienced in treating essential tremor patients with focused ultrasound, a noninvasive and painless new treatment that has the potential to eliminate their trembling. Read more and watch a video.
Columbia Father-Daughter Super Duo Inspires on Father’s Day
VP&S father-daughter duo Rudolph Leibel, MD, co-director of the Naomi Berrie Diabetes Center, and Natasha Leibel, MD, a pediatric endocrinologist, work in parallel at the forefront of science and medicine to improve the treatment of patients with diabetes and obesity. The mutual admiration and respect the two have for each other is palpable. Natasha says of her father: “He truly is the most brilliant person I have ever met and a real renaissance man.” Read more.
New Play by Columbia Scientist Explores Early Days of HIV Epidemic
A new play, “Love + Science," written by David J. Glass, MD, adjunct professor of genetics & development at VP&S, and starring Matt Walker, a PhD candidate at Columbia, tells the story of two gay Columbia medical students who meet while working in a retrovirology lab in the early 1980s. Read more.
VP&S Magazine Profiles New Peer Support Program for Students
This year, members of the first-year class at VP&S took part in a program with second-year students serving as peer advisors, augmenting the existing advisory dean system with "near-peer" advising relationships. Columbia Medicine magazine reports on the initiative as well as the new "house" system, which assigns incoming students to one of six houses. Read more and view the full spring/summer 2023 issue of Columbia Medicine at the magazine’s new website.
Drug to Treat Cannabis Use Disorder Shows Promise in Columbia-Led Clinical Trial
A first-in-class drug engineered to selectively inhibit the signaling pathway of the cannabinoid receptor shows promise as a safe and effective treatment for cannabis use disorder, according to results from a phase 2a clinical trial led by Margaret (Meg) Haney, PhD, professor of neurobiology in the Department of Psychiatry at VP&S and director of the Cannabis Research Laboratory. Cannabis use disorder is a condition in which people are unable to control their cannabis use, even though it's causing problems in their lives. Read more.
EVENTS
Drag Story Hour with Harmonica Sunbeam
June 22, 11:45 a.m., Presbyterian Building, 622 W. 168 St., King Library, PH West 1560
Register here.
VP&S Afternoon of Science: Department of Genetics and Development
June 22, 12 p.m., School of Nursing, 560 W. 168 St., 7th Floor
Register here.
Community Research Forum on Cancer
June 22, 6 p.m., Irving Cancer Research Center, 1130 St. Nicholas Ave., 1st Floor Auditorium
Register here.
VP&S Afternoon of Science: Institute for Cancer Genetics
June 26, 12 p.m., School of Nursing, 560 W. 168 St., 7th Floor
Register here.
ColumbiaDoctors Outreach With Radiology and Dentistry
June 27, 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., Haven Plaza, Haven Avenue between Fort Washington Avenue and 169 Street
Register here.
Callen-Lorde Presents: LGBTQ+ Health
June 27, 11 a.m., online
Register here.
LGBTQ+ Lecture Series: Nothing For Us Without Us: The Role of Intersectionality and Positionality in LGBT Health Equity Research
June 28, 4 p.m., Faculty Club, 630 W. 168 St., 4th Floor
Register here.
My Name is Pauli Murray: Film Screening & Panel Discussion
June 29, 4 p.m., School of Nursing, 560 W. 168 St., 7th Floor Rooftop
Register here.
ACE Master Clinician Mentorship Series: Transition of Care from Pediatrics to Adulthood
June 30, 8 a.m., online
Register here.
GRANTS
COLLEGE OF DENTAL MEDICINE
Burton Edelstein, DDS: $300,000 over one year from the Mother Cabrini Health Foundation for "Telehealth-delivered Enhanced Caries Counseling for Socially vulnerable Children at High-risk for Tooth Decay (Renewal)."
VAGELOS COLLEGE OF PHYSICIANS AND SURGEONS
William Fifer, PhD, Psychiatry: $782,749 over four years for a subaward from the National Institute on Drug Abuse for "Healthy Brain and Child Development National Consortium Data Coordinating Center."
Vilas Menon, PhD, Neurology: $486,520 over three years from the Simons Foundation for "Integration of electrophysiological and transcriptomic signatures of cognitive resilience in the hippocampus using patch-seq."
Muredach Reilly, MD, Medicine: $2,814,949 over four years from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute for "Smooth muscle cell-derived cell fates and cellular interactions in atherosclerotic plaque stability in disease progression and regression."
Sandra Ryeom, PhD, Surgery, and Karol Piotr Nowicki-Osuch, PhD, Irving Institute for Cancer Dynamics: $4,848,112 over five years from the National Cancer Institute for "Initiation of Diffuse and Intestinal Non-Cardia Gastric Cancer."
Gülgün Tezel, MD, Ophthalmology: $1,645,000 over four years from the National Eye Institute for "Modulation of Neuroinflammation in Glaucoma."
Giuseppe Tosto, MD, Sergievsky Center: $1,249,387 over five years for a subaward from the National Institute on Aging for "Recruitment and Retention for Alzheimer’s Disease Diversity Genetic Cohorts in the ADSP (READD – ADSP) Project 2."
Chaolin Zhang, PhD, Systems Biology: $568,846 over one year from the National Human Genome Research Institute for "Mapping proximal and distal splicing-regulatory elements."
HONORS
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY IRVING MEDICAL CENTER
Five Columbia University faculty members have been named Velocity Fellows: Elisa E. Konofagou, PhD, Biomedical Engineering and Radiology; Jack Grinband, PhD, Psychiatry and Radiology; Edmond M. Chan, MD, Medicine; Juan Manuel Schvartzman, MD, PhD, Medicine; and Jeanine Genkinger, PhD, Epidemiology, Mailman School of Public Health.
SCHOOL OF NURSING
Leon Chen, DNP, has been appointed to the Society of Critical Care Medicine’s Adult ICU Triage Guideline Committee as an Expert Panel Member.
Corina Lelutiu-Weinberger, PhD, was appointed a standing member of the Population and Public Health Approaches to HIV/AIDS Study Section of the National Institutes of Health starting July 1, 2023.
Marlene McHugh, DNP, has received the Distinguished Alumni Award from the Presbyterian School of Nursing/Presbyterian University of Pennsylvania Medical Center.
VAGELOS COLLEGE OF PHYSICIANS & SURGEONS
Olajide Williams, MD, Neurology, received the 2023 Clio Health Impact Award.
SOCIAL MEDIA SNAPSHOT
IN THE NEWS HIGHLIGHTS
Gothamist
Like Smoking 30 Cigarettes in 8 Hours: NYC’s Air Quality Crisis, Tallied
Jun 15, 2023 - “This is three to four times higher than the World Health Organization guidelines and EPA national ambient air quality standards,” said Dr. Marianthi-Anna Kioumourtzoglou, assistant professor of environmental health sciences at Columbia’s Mailman School of Public Health.
The Guardian
‘Pushed into humanity’: Can Learning about Storytelling Make Better Doctors?
Jun 11, 2023 - Rita Charon, the founder of the narrative medicine programming at Columbia, writes about how it is assumed that health professionals “know of the centrality and privilege of storytelling in their practice”. And yet an ignorance of the importance of patient story has become a defining professional trait.
CNN Online
FDA Advisers Recommend that Covid-19 Boosters for Fall Should Drop Original Strain
Jun 15, 2023 - “Your immune response likes to react to what it’s seen before,” said Dr. David Ho, a professor of microbiology and immunology and director of the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center at Columbia University whose research is cited in the FDA’s briefing documents. “That’s why we made the recommendation that if you want to broaden out your antibody responses, it’s best to remove the ancestral spike in future vaccines,” Ho said.