CUIMC Update - June 5, 2024

June 5, 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

Columbia Breaks Ground on New Biomedical Research Building
The eight-story biomedical research facility, located at the intersection of West 167th Street and Audubon Avenue, will house state-of-art research laboratories and community engagement spaces and will be the first university-owned research building in New York City that does not rely on fossil fuels.

Four VP&S Scientists Receive Schaefer Research Scholar Awards
Four scientists at VP&S including full-time faculty Iok In Christine Chio, Institute for Cancer Genetics, and Xuebing Wu, Medicine, have received awards from the Schaefer Research Scholars Program, made possible through a bequest from Dr. Ludwig Schaefer.

The Joy of Nursing
Headlines today are likely to associate nursing with burnout, but four Columbia Nursing alumni, in conversation with Ashley Graham-Perel, assistant professor, discussed the joy to be found in many aspects of nursing—while also acknowledging the challenges in the field.

U.S. Health Departments Struggle to Reach Adequate Staffing Levels
Health departments continue to face challenges in recruiting new employees due to insufficient funding, a shortage of people with public health training, a lack of visibility for public careers, and lengthy hiring processes, a study from Mailman researchers finds.

Events

Grants

Mailman School of Public Health

  • Heather Krasna, Health Policy & Management
    $350,013 over four years for a subaward from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for "PHAB and Partners Supporting and Strengthening U.S. Public Health Infrastructure, Workforce and Data Systems."
  • Carrigan Parish, Sociomedical Sciences
    $348,518 over five years for a subaward from the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research for "The CROWN study: Comprehensive Research on Oral and Mental Health Among Women."

School of Nursing

  • Alicia Matthews
    $1,174,189 over four years for a subaward from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute for "Mi QUIT CARE (Mile Square QUIT Community-Access-Referral-Expansion)."

Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons

  • Jinsy Andrews, Neurology
    $45,083,285 over four years from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke for "Intermediate-sized Expanded Access Protocol for CNM-Au8 in Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS)."
  • Andrew Beenken, Medicine
    $832,500 over five years from the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases for "Structural regulation of megalin recycling in the proximal tubule."
  • Ansgar Brambrink, Anesthesiology
    $452,375 over two years from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development for "Pericyte function in anesthetic-induced vasodilation and developmental neurotoxicity."
  • Delivette Castor, Elena Elkin, Louise Kuhn, Rachel Shelton, and Parisa Tehranifar, Medicine
    $4,773,248 over five years from the National Cancer Institute for "The Empilisweni Center for Women’s Health – Advancing Implementation of Equitable Cervical Cancer Control."
  • Stephanie Cosentino, Sergievsky Center
    $250,000 over three years from the Alzheimer's Association for "Evaluating Memory as Part of Women's Routine Care."
  • Riccardo Dalla-Favera and Laura Pasqualucci, Institute for Cancer Genetics
    $750,000 over three years from the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society for "Genomics of Diffuse Large B Cell Lymphoma: pervasive role of super-enhancer hypermutation in dysregulating oncogene expression."
  • Philip De Jager, Neurology
    $1,360,184 over five years for a subaward from the National Center for Research Resources for "Probing Heterogeneity of Alzheimer's Disease Using iPSCs."
  • Lisa Dixon, Psychiatry
    $1,961,133 over five years for a subaward from the National Institute of Mental Health for "Optimizing and Personalizing Interventions for Schizophrenia Across the Lifespan (OPAL)."
  • Giovanni Ferrari, Surgery
    $1,069,250 over three years from XVIVO Perfusion for "Physiology and Cellular Biology of Non-ischemic Heart Preservation."
  • Justin Knox, Psychiatry
    $366,721 over four years for a subaward from the National Institute on Drug Abuse for "Heavy Cannabis Use, Neurocognition, And Prep Care Engagement Among Young Black Sexual Minority."
  • Filippo Mancia, Physiology & Cellular Biophysics
    $2,352,579 over five years from the National Cancer Institute for "Molecular Mechanisms of Wnt Transport."
  • Steven Marx, Medicine
    $2,722,349 over four years from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute for "Phosphorylation-dependent regulation of calcium channels by macromolecular complexes."
  • Akiva Mintz, Radiology
    $254,190 over one year for a subaward from the National Institute on Aging for "PET imaging of microtubules in cognitively normal and impaired older adults."
  • Soojin Park, Neurology
    $3,064,122 over five years from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke for "ContinuOuS Monitoring tool for delayed cerebral IsChemia (COSMIC)."
  • Anna Penn, Pediatrics
    $2,579,938 over five years from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development for "Novel Roles of Placental Allopregnanolone in Brain Development and Injury."
  • Serge Przedborski, Neurology
    $452,375 over two years from the National Institute on Aging for "A multiplexable in vivo perturbation toolkit to identify genes affecting neurodegeneration in a model of synucleinopathy."
  • Kapil Ramachandran, Taub Institute
    $300,000 over two years from the Alzheimer's Association for "Neuroproteasomes modulate endosome trafficking and processing."
  • Carrie Shawber, Obstetrics & Gynecology
    $2,075,169 over four years from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute for "Notch Signaling in the Adult Lymphatic Vasculature."
  • Melissa Stockwell, Pediatrics
    $304,655 over five years from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for "CISA Clinical Vaccine Safety Evaluation."
  • Lucille Torres-Deas, Medicine
    $1,979,509 over five years from the Health Resources and Services Administration for "Conexiones Linguisticas Community & Clinical Program."
  • Robert Wechsler-Reya, HICCC
    $1,031,828 over five years for a subaward from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke for "Investigation of ecDNA as a driver of intratumoral heterogeneity and treatment resistance in high-risk medulloblastoma."
  • Xuebing Wu, Medicine
    $402,500 over one year from the Cure Alzheimer's Fund for "Noncoding translation feedback loop in Alzheimer's Disease."

Honors

Mailman School of Public Health

Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons

Social Media Snapshot

 

Columbia Medicine

According to @columbiamsph's Matt Perzanowski, PhD: Research at Columbia has found that when humans are exposed to diesel smoke, they risk developing allergies to proteins they weren’t previously allergic to.

In the News Highlights

  • Anger Does a Lot More Damage to Your Body Than You Realize
    May 22, 2024
    The Wall Street Journal
    One recent study looked at anger’s effects on the heart. It found that anger can raise the risk of heart attacks because it impairs the functioning of blood vessels, according to a May study in the Journal of the American Heart Association. “We speculate over time if you’re getting these chronic insults to your arteries because you get angry a lot, that will leave you at risk for having heart disease,” says Dr. Daichi Shimbo, a professor of medicine at Columbia University and lead author of the study.
  • Girls Are Getting Their First Periods Earlier. Here's What Parents Should Know
    May 31, 2024
    NPR Online
    “The age at which someone starts their period is kind of a barometer of how they're doing in general,” says Lauren Houghton, an assistant professor at epidemiology at Columbia University who wrote a commentary accompanying the new study. “If someone reaches their first period before the age of 12, they are at a 20% increased risk for breast cancer,” Houghton says.
  • Gene Therapies for Deafness Dredge Up an Old Question: Do Deaf People Want a ‘Cure’?
    May 28, 2024
    STAT News
    “This has been the dream of our field for 30-plus years to come up with a molecular treatment to give people real, natural hearing, that they were originally intended to have,” said Larry Lustig, a hearing otolaryngologist at Columbia University who is leading a Regeneron-backed trial showing promising results using gene therapy to treat deafness. “This is going to be transformative.”