Dear Members of the Englander Institute,
I hope you were able to take some time off this summer and relax with friends and family members, and hopefully recharge for a productive autumn.
As you’ll see below, members of the EIPM had a very productive August, with significant news media coverage of our work, presentations at major international conferences, and impactful publications in high-profile journals. Thank you all for the great work during the heat of the summer!
We recently posted a website news article about Dr. Pashtoon Kasi, our Director of Liquid Biopsy Research: “A Conversation with Dr. Pashtoon Kasi.” I hope you enjoy learning about Pashtoon’s background and research interests.
We are still looking to fill several exciting new career opportunities at the EIPM, including Fellowships, new positions in informatics and computational biology, plus a few research technician openings. Please share this information within your professional networks so we can quickly staff up.
Thank you again for your hard work and continued dedication to our mission.
Sincerely,
Olivier Elemento, Ph.D.
News Coverage & Awards
Dr. Lisa Newman, was interviewed for the article “How Is the Medical Community Addressing Disparities,” in Medical News Today on August 3rd.
Dr. Nasser Altorki was interviewed for the article, “Sublobar Resection the ‘New Standard of Care’ in Small-Sized NSCLC — Large randomized study shows non-inferiority to lobectomy,” which appeared in MedPageToday on August 8th; a similar article was published in Healio on August 17th.
Dr. Laura Santambrogio, our Associate Director for Precision Immunology, published “PDIA3 epitope-driven immune autoreactivity contributes to hepatic damage in type 2 diabetes,” in Science Immunology on August 19th that generated news coverage, “Researchers uncover how T and B cells learn to attack liver cells in metabolic diseases,” in The Science Advisory Board on August 22nd; and in the American Association for the Advancement of Science on August 19th.
Shortly after Dr. Manel Esteller, a researcher at the Josep Carreras Leukaemia Research Institute in Barcelona, visited us to present a Seminar Series lecture, The New York Times published a front page article “Your Doppelgänger Is Out There and You Probably Share DNA With Them,” on August 23rd about findings from his recent paper in Cell Reports. I was happy to provide my thoughts about how discrepancies between DNA’s predictions and people’s actual appearances might alert doctors to problems within the article. On August 4th I was interviewed for an NYP website news article, “Novel Technique Provides Insights into Lung Pathology in COVID-19,” that covered the results of our May 2022 study in Nature. I also participated in the production of a video blog with Owkin to explore the promise of spatial omics and why this technology is poised to deliver major scientific breakthroughs in the coming years.
Clinical Director Dr. Cora N. Sternberg sat down with The Uromigos Legends Series podcast hosts for a fascinating and in-depth interview that celebrated her successful career in medical oncology and urological malignancies on August 15th.
Dr. Marcin Imieliński, from WCM’s Pathology and Laboratory Medicine Department, and the EIPM, was quoted in the article “Whole-exome sequencing may improve prediction of cancer immunotherapy response,” in Healio on August 16th discussing his recent paper in Nature Communications.
Our Director of Bladder Cancer Research Dr. Bishoy M. Faltas published UroToday Expert Commentary, “Outcomes of First-line Chemotherapy and Second-line Immune Checkpoint Inhibitor in Patients with Advanced Urothelial Carcinoma,” on August 25th, and “The Association Between the Site of Metastasis and Clinical Outcomes in Patients with Advanced Urothelial Carcinoma,” on August 30th.
Events
Dr. Bishoy M. Faltas Co-Chaired the 2022 Bladder Cancer Advocacy Network Think Tank meeting from August 3-5, 2022.
Dr. Juan Miguel Mosquera from WCM’s Pathology and Laboratory Medicine department, and our Director of Research Pathology, presented a Seminar in Gastrointestinal Molecular Pathology in August at the 43rd Meeting of the Colombian Society of Pathology in Cartagena de Indias.
Dr. Nasser K. Altorki presented research at the IASLC 2022 World Conference on Lung Cancer.
Upcoming events
- Dr. Lorenzo Galluzzi will be organizing ImmunoRad, the 6th International Conference on Immunotherapy Radiotherapy Combinations from Sept. 22-24th, and our Associate Director for Precision Immunology Dr. Laura Santambrogio will present.
- I’ll be presenting “Towards Machine Learning-Driven Drug Development,” at the 23rd European Symposium on Quantitative Structure-Activity Relationship, Sept 26-30 in Heidelberg. On September 19th I will deliver the Keynote address, “The Future of Personalized Medicine,” at this year’s annual WCM Postdoc Research Day–organizers are looking for people to judge both oral and poster presentations. And finally, I’ll present “Machine Learning and AI: Computational Science in Immuno-Oncology,” at the SITC-NCI Computational Immuno-oncology Webinar Series on September 15th.
- Dr. Karsten Suhre will present at Biocrates: The Future of Research and Health on October 12th.
Publications
“Triplet therapy with androgen deprivation, docetaxel, and androgen receptor signaling inhibitors in metastatic castration-sensitive prostate cancer: A meta-analysis,” by Clinical Director Dr. Cora N. Sternberg in the European Journal of Cancer, August 11th.
“Using Circulating Tumor DNA in Colorectal Cancer: Current and Evolving Practices,” was published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Dr. Pashtoon Kasi from the Meyer Cancer Center and EIPM’s Director for Liquid Biopsy Research on August 20th.
“Next generation patient derived tumor organoids,” published by Ex Vivo Models Director Dr. Laura Martin and myself, with Post Doc Enrique Podaza, Hui-Hsuan Kuo and John Nguyen in Translational Research, August 12th.
“Immuno-epigenetic escape of cancer stem cells,” a Nature Immunology commentary on a paper that proves how important potent immune responses driven by therapy are to avoid cancer stem cells to persist and drive cancer relapse, by Dr. Lorenzo Galluzzi on August 24th.
“Application of Artificial Intelligence to overcome clinical information overload in urological cancer,” in BJU International by our Clinical Director Dr. Cora N. Sternberg and Dr. Andrea Sboner from the WCM Pathology and Laboratory Medicine department and our Director of Informatics and Computational Biology, September 2022.
“GLI1-Rearranged Enteric Tumor. Expanding the Spectrum of Gastrointestinal Neoplasms with GLI1gene fusions,” was published in The American Journal of Surgical Pathology by Pathology and Laboratory Medicine’s Dr. Jose Jessurun and Dr. Juan Miguel Mosquera, also from the WCM Pathology and Laboratory Medicine department, and our Director of Research Pathology, with a range of WCM colleagues on August 15th.
“Acid Sphingomyelinase-Ceramide Induced Vascular Injury Determines Colorectal Cancer Stem Cell Fate,” by our Ex Vivo Models Director
Dr. M. Laura Martin in Cellular Physiology & Biochemistry on August 31st.
“Characterization of Genetic Risk of End-Stage Knee Osteoarthritis Treated with Total Knee Arthroplasty: A Genome-Wide Association Study,” in the Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery, by our former colleague Dr. Scott Kulm and myself, August 23rd.
“PDIA3 epitope-driven immune autoreactivity contributes to hepatic damage in type 2 diabetes,” in Science Immunology by our Associate Director for Precision Immunology
Dr. Laura Santambrogio and Dr. Lorenzo Galluzzi, August 19th.
“Endothelial-leukemia interactions remodel drug responses uncovering T-ALL vulnerabilities,” in the journal Blood coauthored by our colleagues Drs. Liron Yoffe and Yang Hu, in a paper by Dr. Giorgio Inghirami from the WCM Pathology and Laboratory Medicine department and EIPM, with more than a dozen WCM colleagues, August 22nd.
“Efficient detection and assembly of non-reference DNA sequences with synthetic long reads,” in Nucleic Acids Research, by Dr. Iman Hajirasouliha, August 4th.