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.

13 Female Physicians Cemented into Weill Cornell Medicine History Thanks to Special Archive Project

two women posing for a photo

Weill Cornell Medical College student Pauline Flaum-Dunoyer is a natural storyteller and historian.

Since she was 10 years old, she has considered what it means to preserve history in a respectful way. She recalls visiting her great-uncle, a historian with expertise in the West African countries of Mali and Togo, and looking with fascination at the wooden masks on his wall. She understood then the trust that was placed in him to care for the culturally significant relics.

As a college student, her curiosity about the past and how it shapes the present led her to study religion and “examine patterns in religious doctrine that have influenced culture and society,” she said.

With a passion for understanding who and what preceded us, Flaum-Dunoyer attended a history of medicine lecture in 2019 as a first-year medical student at Weill Cornell Medicine and immediately realized that it seemed incomplete. She wondered: What about the work of women and people of color?

“People of color have contributed to medicine in this country, sometimes to the detriment of their own community,” said Flaum-Dunoyer, now a graduating fourth-year student. 

Pregnant Patients with Anxiety Have Altered Immune Systems

silouette of a pregnant woman

The immune system of pregnant women with anxiety is biologically different from that of pregnant women without anxiety, according to new research from Weill Cornell Medicine, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and Columbia University Irving Medical Center investigators.

The study, published Sept. 14 in Brain, Behavior and Immunity, demonstrates that pregnant women with anxiety have higher levels of certain immune cells known as cytotoxic T cells; these cells attack infected or otherwise compromised cells within the body. Women with anxiety also showed differences in the activity of immune markers that circulate in the blood. This is the first known study to evaluate the relationship of anxiety to the trajectory of immune changes over the course of pregnancy and the postpartum period.

a woman in glasses smiling for a portrait

Dr. Lauren M. Osborne

Scientists Detail Major Mechanism Lung Cancers Use to Evade Immune Attack

illustration of cells

A protein commonly found at high levels in lung cancer cells controls a major immunosuppressive pathway that allows lung tumors to evade immune attack, according to a study led by researchers at Weill Cornell Medicine. The discovery could hasten the development of treatments that overcome this tumor defense mechanism and improve outcomes for lung cancer patients.

In the study, which appears Jan. 9 in Nature Communications, the researchers analyzed human lung cancer datasets and performed experiments in preclinical models of lung cancer to show that the transcription factor XBP1s enhances tumor survival by suppressing the anti-cancer activity of neighboring immune cells. They discovered that XBP1s exerts this effect by driving the production of a powerful immunosuppressive molecule, prostaglandin E2.

“We found that XBP1s is part of an important pathway in cancer cells that regulates the local immune environment in lung tumors, and can be disabled to increase anticancer immunity,” said study co-senior author Dr. Vivek Mittal, the Gerald J. Ford-Wayne Isom Professor of Cardiothoracic Surgery and director of the Neuberger Berman Lung Cancer Laboratory at Weill Cornell Medicine.

Contact Us