Updated on Jun 30, 2022 | Community, Inside, School, Your Health
At the John F. Kennedy Medical Center in Monrovia, Liberia, health officials, doctors, residents, and medical students gathered for grand rounds on the importance of research that were presented by Mount Sinai’s OBGYN team.
After suspending travel to Liberia during the largest outbreak of Ebola in history, faculty at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai resumed their teaching trips to the West African country last fall, with renewed efforts to improve women’s health.
Led by Ann Marie Beddoe, MD, Assistant Professor, Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Science, members of the Mount Sinai community have undertaken several initiatives in Liberia since they began working there in 2008. They are helping to train the country’s first residents in obstetrics and gynecology and have applied for a grant from the National Institutes of Health to help build a cancer center. They have also trained nurses to conduct human papillomavirus (HPV) screenings and counsel patients. (more…)
Updated on Jun 30, 2022 | Inside, Research, School
The MEGENA tool has 3D spheres that help uncover precise network clusters associated with disease progression.
Two new Big Data analysis tools that help pinpoint specific genes that are actively involved in disease progression were recently made available to the public by scientists in the Multiscale Network Modeling Laboratory at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.
The team, led by Bin Zhang, PhD, Associate Professor in the Department of Genetics and Genomic Sciences, published the pair of algorithm-based tools online in November 2015 in PLoS Computational Biology and in Scientific Reports, a Nature publication. The open-source tools are available to all researchers who wish to gain a better understanding of disease mechanisms in order to develop more effective drugs and create individualized treatments. (more…)
Updated on Jun 30, 2022 | Inside, School, Your Health
The Mount Sinai Genetic Testing Laboratory’s Executive Director, Lisa Edelmann, PhD, left, and Director, Ruth Kornreich, PhD
The Mount Sinai Genetic Testing Laboratory in January introduced a new panel of comprehensive pan-ethnic carrier screening tests for 281 genetic disorders, the largest currently available. Mount Sinai’s NextStep Carrier Screening also includes the most comprehensive panel of tests for 96 diseases found in the Ashkenazi Jewish population and is the first of its kind to address the largely overlooked needs of the Sephardi and Mizrahi Jewish populations.
“Building on years of in-house genetic research and technology adaptation in our clinical laboratory, we created tests that not only expand the number of diseases screened, but also increase the breadth of coverage, to improve carrier detection rates and provide more accurate residual risk estimates to patients,” says Lisa Edelmann, PhD, Executive Director of the Mount Sinai Genetic Testing Laboratory within the Department of Genetics and Genomic Sciences. (more…)
Updated on Jun 30, 2022 | Inside, Research, School
In Mount Sinai’s Branford, Connecticut, laboratory, Research Associate Courtney Pietropaolo prepares DNA samples for sequencing.
In its first full year of operation, the Mount Sinai Genetic Testing Laboratory in Branford, Connecticut, has become an integral part of the Mount Sinai Health System’s efforts to better diagnose and treat disease.
The 16,400-square-foot facility, located 85 miles from New York City, has the high-throughput equipment to sequence thousands of samples monthly to uncover variations in DNA that code for Alzheimer’s and coronary disease, and cancer, among other diseases. (more…)
Updated on Jun 30, 2022 | Inside, Research
Kavita Dharmarajan, MD, M.Sc
Advanced-stage cancer patients who received palliative care required shorter durations of radiation treatment and had shorter hospital stays, according to a recent study at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.
“Radiation therapy is very effective at relieving pain, but the standard two weeks of treatment may be too long or burdensome for some patients, given the state of their illnesses,” says the study’s senior author, Kavita Dharmarajan, MD, M.Sc, Assistant Professor of Radiation Oncology, and Geriatrics and Palliative Medicine, at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. “We showed that shorter course treatments can be equally, if not more, effective, especially when combined with other forms of therapy that put patients first, and not the tumor.” (more…)
Updated on Jun 30, 2022 | Inside
The Mount Sinai Health System launched its first television commercials as part of its “For you. For life.” campaign in local markets on Sunday, January 10, an effort that extends to national markets beginning Monday, January 25. The commercials supplement an extensive print advertising campaign that began in 2015, which spotlighted Mount Sinai’s commitment to lifetime compassionate care, innovative medical education, and breakthrough research. (more…)
