CUIMC Update - October 15, 2025

October 15, 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

CUIMC Celebrates Hispanic Heritage Month
CUIMC recognized Hispanic Heritage Month with a celebration on Haven Plaza for students, faculty, staff, and community members, as well as a National Latino Physician Day reception where proclamations from Mayor Adams and Governor Hochul were presented to attendees.

Stress Alters Metabolic Hormone with Health Consequences
A new discovery from researchers at Mailman and VP&S helps explain how psychological stress causes metabolic dysregulation and drives physical disease.

Why Study The Brain?
We asked our neuroscientists, they responded: Understanding this extraordinary organ is key to understanding ourselves, tackling devastating diseases, and building a better future for us all.

Columbia Fertility Treatment Named One of TIME’s Best Inventions of 2025
Inspired by techniques that astrophysicists use to find new galaxies, Columbia Fertility is using AI and advanced imaging to recover rare sperm cells from men with very low sperm counts and help them become fathers.

Health Care's Rush to AI Scribes Risks Patient Safety, Researchers Warn
A study from researchers at the School of Nursing found that the rapid adoption of AI scribes in health care is outpacing validation and oversight.

Events

Grants

Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons

  • Cory Abate-Shen, Anil Rustgi, and Michael Shen, Molecular Pharmacology and Therapeutics
    $10,000,000 over five years from the Mark Foundation for Cancer Research for “Mechanisms and therapeutic targeting of lineage plasticity and tumor progression in bladder and esophageal cancer.”  
  • Joachim Frank, Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics
    $1,200,000 over three years from the National Science Foundation for “Development of time-resolved cryo-EM for application to diverse biological molecules.” 
  • Gustavo Maegawa, Pediatrics
    $330,434 over three years from the Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Limited for "Discovery of Novel and Clinically Sound Biomarkers for MPS-II."
  • Michel Sadelain, Medicine
    $399,434 over two years from Alaya.bio for “Evaluation and validation of Alaya.bio's polymeric delivery platform.” 

Honors

Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons

  • Harry Reyes Nieva, Infectious Diseases
    Was selected as a 2025 STAT Wunderkind, an award recognizing the work of early-career scientists and clinicians.

School of Nursing

Social Media Snapshot

Instagram

In the News Highlights

  • Morning Edition: Researchers Concerned New U.S. Dietary Guidelines Will Overlook Harms of Alcohol
    Oct 1, 2025
    NPR (audio)
    Katherine Keyes is an epidemiologist at Columbia University. She says their study looked at lots of things - motor vehicle accidents, cancer, cardiovascular disease, stroke. “We showed in that paper that the risks begin to increase even at relatively low levels of alcohol consumption," Keyes said.

    Editor's Note: Katherine Keyes, interviewed for this episode of Morning Edition, is a professor of epidemiology at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. 
  • Eyewitness News: Columbia School of Nursing Dean Talks Wellness Choices After Surviving Breast Cancer
    Oct 6, 2025
    ABC News 7 New York (video)
    A breast cancer survivor is sharing her decisions about wellness, and how she's become a woman committed to her health through making changes, like giving up alcohol. "I'm a nurse... I never skipped mammography," said breast cancer survivor Lorraine Frazier. Frazier is sharing many of the things she believes have saved and prolonged her life after breast cancer. As the dean of Columbia University School of Nursing, she has a lot of eager listeners.  
  • Common Opioid Is Not That Effective for Easing Chronic Pain, Study Finds
    Oct 7, 2025
    CNN Online
    “Most of the included trials were short-term – majority 12 weeks or less – so we can’t draw firm conclusions about long-term safety or sustained benefit,” Dr. Jason Chang, assistant professor and interventional spine and musculoskeletal medicine expert at Columbia University’s Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons, said in an email. “The review also grouped together a wide range of pain conditions, which may obscure differences in how tramadol works for specific diagnoses,” said Chang, who wasn’t involved with the new research.
     
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