For more than 15 years, Doctor Eric Bouhassira and his team have been researching stem cells at Albert Einstein College of Medicine with the mission to use stem cells to create new red blood cells. Leading up to Stem Cell Awareness Day, Dr. Bouhassira and Jo Wiederhorn, President and CEO of the Associated Medical Schools of New York, spoke to Bronx News 12 to educate the public about the importance of stem cell research and stem cell funding. Take a closer look.

UR Medicine’s Wilmot Cancer Institute is continuing its practice-changing research into cancer side-effects and symptom management with a coveted $29 million grant from the National Cancer Institute. The award is the largest single grant currently funded at the University of Rochester Medical Center. Take a closer look.

Certain fungi move from the gut to the pancreas, expand their population more than a thousand-fold, and encourage pancreatic cancer growth, a new study finds. Published online in Nature October 2, the study is the first to offer strong evidence that the mycobiome-the local mix of fungal species in the pancreas-can trigger changes that turn normal cells into pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDA). This form of cancer is usually fatal within two years. Take a closer look.

In many ways, breast cancer doesn’t discriminate. It strikes young and old, rich and poor, women and men-people from all walks of life. Yet for Dr. Lisa Newman it’s long been clear that the disease isn’t an equal-opportunity illness. When Dr. Newman was starting out as a general surgeon in Brooklyn in the 90s, she started to notice something unusual among the African American women who were coming to her after being diagnosed. They were often younger than her white patients, and usually had tumors that were harder to treat. Take a closer look.

If researchers could observe drug delivery and its effect on cancer cells in real time, they would be able to tailor treatment options with unprecedented specificity. An academic-industrial partnership between engineers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, molecular and cellular biologists at Albany Medical College, and engineers at MARS Bioimaging Ltd aims to make this a reality for the treatment of breast cancer through the combination of highly innovative X-ray and optical imaging technologies. Take a closer look.

Researchers at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai have received a contract award of up to $132 million from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), as part of a new Collaborative Influenza Vaccine Innovation Centers (CIVICs) program to further develop the universal flu vaccine. The Icahn School of Medicine and Emory University will form a joint vaccine center that will become part of the large CIVICs network of research centers. Take a closer look.

Inside the brain, Parkinson’s disease is a selective assassin. The disease targets dopamine-producing neurons in a small region deep inside the brain known as the substantia nigra compacta (SNc), while largely sparing neighboring neurons and dopamine neurons elsewhere. For decades, Parkinson’s researchers have tried to understand why the disease singles out these particular neurons in this particular region of the brain. Take a closer look.

 A retrospective, five-year study of 1,314 patients with multiple sclerosis (MS) has found that atrophied brain lesion volume is the only marker from MRI scans that can accurately predict which patients will progress to the most severe form of the disease.  Secondary progressive MS, known as SPMS, typically appears 10 to 20 years after the initial onset and causes patients to become more physically and cognitively impaired. Take a closer look.

Scientists have been poking and prodding the brain for centuries in hopes of learning how this gelatinous mass of billions of interconnected neurons influences thoughts, emotions, movement, mental and behavioral problems, and just about everything else that makes us human. One of the great advances in neuroscience came in the 1930s, when a surgeon named Wilder Penfield used electrodes to explore the brains of epilepsy patients. Take a closer look.

Does the misuse of legal pharmaceuticals lead to arrest? This was the question that TouroCOM Middletown student Cameron Ghassemi, together with a fellow medical student from Geisinger Commonwealth School of Medicine, spent the summer trying to figure out. Ghassemi and his study partner, Tyler Hoopman, used the Maine Diversion Alert Program, a database that chronicles all arrests made in Maine along with any relevant drug use cataloged during the arrest. Take a closer look.

As the opioid crisis challenges communities across the country, Albert Einstein College of Medicine and Montefiore Health System held a full-day conference to bring together scientists, clinicians, policymakers, and community activists to discuss promising research in the field of addiction, effective treatment models for people with opioid use disorder, and the urgent need for innovation to confront the epidemic that claimed more than 70,000 lives in the United States last year. Take a closer look.

The Columbia team behind the revolutionary 3D SCAPE microscope announces a new version of this high-speed imaging technology. In collaboration with scientists from around the world, they used SCAPE 2.0 to reveal previously unseen details of living creatures – from neurons firing inside a wriggling worm to the 3D dynamics of the beating heart of a fish embryo, with far superior resolution and at speeds up to 30 times faster than their original demonstration. Take a closer look.

When Betty Delgado got pregnant in 2016, she and her doctors had serious concerns. The 36-year-old Queens resident has lupus, an autoimmune disease that predominantly affects women and carries an elevated risk of complications during pregnancy. Approximately one-fifth of pregnant lupus patients face serious problems that include miscarriage, preterm birth, stillbirth and preeclampsia, a condition involving high blood pressure that can jeopardize the health of both the mother and unborn child. Take a closer look.

If a child has been diagnosed with asthma but traditional medications have little or no effect, it may be time to consider a new diagnosis-and a new course of treatment, says Craig Zalvan, M.D., clinical professor of otolaryngology at New York Medical College. According to Dr. Zalvan, particularly for girls ages 12 to 17 previously diagnosed with sport-induced asthma, it’s entirely possible that they may actually be suffering from paradoxical vocal fold motion disorder (PVFMD), a lesser known often misdiagnosed breathing disorder that results from abnormal movement of the vocal folds during breathing.  

Increasing levels of a simplified version of “good” cholesterol reversed disease in the blood vessels of mice with diabetes, a new study finds. Published online in the journal Circulation

After studying patients suffering from a history of fainting and similar symptoms related to Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome (POTS)-a circulation disorder characterized by insufficient flow of blood to the heart when moving from a lying down to standing position-investigators from New York Medical College saw their efforts published in The Journal for Pediatrics.  Under the leadership of lead author, Marvin S. Medow, Ph.D., professor of pediatrics and physiology and associate director of the Center for Hypotension, members of the School of Medicine Class of 2020 Kenneth Guber and Shilpan Chokshi, sought to discover if oral rehydrating solution was as effective as intravenous saline when used to treat patients prone to fainting. Take a closer look.

Three Upstate Medical University professors-Jeffrey Ross, MD, Jeffrey Bogart, MD, and Gennady Bratslavsky, MD-were among the researchers presenting their work at the ESMO Congress 2019, the European Society of Medical Oncology, in Barcelona, Spain, Sept. 27 to Oct. 1. The ESMO Congress is world’s second-largest cancer conference. This year the conference attracted more than 28,000 attendees. Take a closer look.

Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research scientists and Zucker School of Medicine at Hofstra/Northwell faculty members have been awarded a five-year, $7.3 million National Institutes of Mental Health (NIMH) grant to support their research in improved schizophrenia treatment. The grant – the largest awarded to Northwell Health in 2019 – supports a study titled “Early-phase Schizophrenia: Practice-based Research to Improve Treatment Outcomes (ESPRITO).” Take a closer look.

An Upstate Medical University professor is the lead investigator on a recently awarded National Institutes of Health grant to study how manipulating a gene could help people better tolerate and recover from chemotherapy. William Kerr, PhD, is a professor of microbiology and immunology, biochemistry and molecular biology as well as pediatrics at Upstate. Take a closer look.

While some medical students took a summer break from their research, NYIT College of Osteopathic Medicine student Connor Abramowicz spent his summer researching cancer treatments at the birthplace of DNA’s double helix: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in Cold Spring Harbor, N.Y. Growing up on Long Island’s north shore, Abramowicz’s family would often visit Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory’s science expositions. Take a closer look.

Second-year NYIT College of Osteopathic Medicine (NYITCOM) student Melanie Schweitzer is on a mission to treat pediatric cancer. She works with her mentor NYITCOM researcher Haotian Zhao, Ph.D., to develop treatments for choroid plexus carcinoma, highly lethal childhood brain tumors. Her extensive work earned her an American Brain Tumor Association neuro-oncology research fellowship. Schweitzer sat down with The Box to talk about her research and why she decided to pursue a career in medicine. Take a closer look.