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, Research
Sophia Frangou, MD, PhD
Individuals whose siblings have bipolar disorder are at high risk for developing mood disorders themselves. However, siblings who remain psychiatrically healthy may have a natural ability to rewire their brains that compensates for their genetic risk. These findings, led by Sophia Frangou, MD, PhD, Professor of Psychiatry at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, were published in the January 5, 2016, issue of Translational Psychiatry. (more…)
Updated on Jun 30, 2022 | Inside, Research, School
After carefully analyzing the electronic health records (EHRs) of 11,000 patients, investigators at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai have discovered three potential new subtypes of type 2 diabetes.
The discovery, led by Joel Dudley, PhD, Director of Biomedical Informatics at the Icahn School of Medicine, highlights the power of new technology and the promise of precision medicine, as the Mount Sinai Health System ushers in the use of Big Data in discovering, treating, and preventing disease. The results of the study were published in Science Translational Medicine in October, 2015. (more…)
Updated on Jun 30, 2022 | Inside, Research
Miriam Merad, MD, PhD
Researchers at The Tisch Cancer Institute have uncovered an intriguing mechanism that may help explain why radiation therapy eradicates cancerous tumors in some patients but not in others.
Their study, reported in the September 7, 2015, issue of Nature Immunology, examined how special skin immune cells, known as Langerhans cells, perform in mice models of melanoma. (more…)
Updated on Jun 30, 2022 | Research, Your Health
The Mount Sinai Genetic Testing Lab, housed in the Department of Genetics and Genomic Sciences and led by Executive Director Lisa Edelmann, worked closely with clinical geneticists who see patients for rare diseases, as well as the bioinformatics team at the Icahn Institute for Genomics and Multiscale Biology at Mount Sinai, to create a line of new tests that help inform couples of their risk of having a child with a genetic disorder. (more…)
