Obstetrics & Gynecology

News and Events

Programs and providers of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Weill Cornell Medicine are often the focus of news stories and features appearing in major national media. We invite you to review some stories that typify the breakthrough accomplishments of our remarkable team and highlight the impact our care has had on patient’s lives.

Small Molecule Treatment Could Make Islet Transplantation Therapy More Effective

Immunofluorescent image of cells tagged with red, green and blue labels

A pretreatment step could help transplanted pancreatic islets survive longer in patients with type 1 diabetes, according to a new preclinical study from Weill Cornell Medicine investigators. One combination of small molecules extended the cells’ lives in female mice, and adding two molecules to the mixture boosted cell survival in male mice.

The findings, published on June 24 in Cell Stem Cell, could allow physicians to treat more patients with fewer cells.

In type 1 diabetes, autoimmune cells attack the pancreatic islets, destroying the insulin-producing beta cells and leaving patients dependent on insulin injections. The current FDA-approved transplant procedure replaces these cells with pancreatic islet cells from one or more deceased organ donors. It typically takes up to 48 hours to isolate islets from the donor for injection into a vein that carries them to the recipient’s liver. Once in the liver, the islet cells begin producing insulin, just as they would in a healthy pancreas.

Research at Risk: Stopping Metastatic Cancer

woman pointing at a computer screen while another woman looks on

Video of Research at Risk: Stopping metastatic cancer

Metastasis. It’s the word cancer patients dread most – and the scan with ominous black spots showing the disease has spread. For too many people, metastatic cancer is kept at bay only for a short time, with chemotherapy and radiation, before the disease returns or the harsh treatments fatally weaken the body.

For more than 20 years, Dr. Nancy Du, associate professor of pathology and laboratory medicine and the Rasweiler Family Research Scholar in Cancer Research at Weill Cornell Medicine, has researched how metastatic cancer arises. With a $500,000 grant over three years from the Congressionally Directed Medical Research Programs at the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD), she was poised to study how to prevent cancer from spreading to the bones of patients with estrogen receptor-positive breast cancer.

“The first line of treatment for this type of cancer is endocrine therapy; but soon after treatment, the cancer becomes resistant to treatment,” she said. “So, we are trying to determine what makes the cells stop responding. We have a clue, and we are testing our hypothesis to develop a better treatment plan for these patients.”

Du had recently begun the research when she received a stop-work order from the DoD in April.

Alzheimer’s Protective Mutation Works by Taming Inflammation in the Brain

Immunofluorescent image of mouse hippocampus stained for tau

A rare gene mutation that delays Alzheimer’s disease does so by damping inflammatory signaling in brain-resident immune cells, according to a preclinical study led by investigators at Weill Cornell Medicine. The finding adds to growing evidence that brain inflammation is a major driver of neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer’s—and that it may be a key therapeutic target for these disorders.

In the study, published June 23 in Immunity, the researchers examined the effects of the mutation APOE3-R136S—known as the “Christchurch mutation”—which was recently found to delay hereditary early-onset Alzheimer’s. The Weill Cornell Medicine scientists showed that the mutation inhibits the cGAS-STING pathway, an innate immune signaling cascade that is abnormally activated in Alzheimer’s and other neurodegenerative diseases. The researchers found that pharmacologically blocking the cGAS-STING pathway with a drug-like inhibitor replicated key protective effects of the mutation in a preclinical model.

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