2021 News

Lancet Publication: "The Art of Medicine: Knowing, Seeing, and Telling in Medicine" by Dr. Rita Charon (featuring DSB Chair, Andrea Califano, PhD)

A discussion with Andrea Califano(link is external and opens in a new window) and narrative medicine writer Rita Charon, "Aflight in ideas and visions, he and his colleagues in systems biology have been soaring toward what Califano predicts as the Golden Age of Biology. Not unlike the golden ages of physics and chemistry, when Newton and Lavoisier broke through conceptual barriers to see with new minds, this age equips biology for flight"

Read full article on Narratives of Discovery page.

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New award for Chaolin Zhang

Chaolin Zhang, PhD, Associate Professor in Systems Biology will receive $2,766,392 over five years from the National Insititue of Neurological Disorders and Stroke for “RNA regulatory networks in neuronal cell type diversity and function”. This award will support Dr. Zhang to understand better post-transcriptional gene expression regulation through specific protein -RNA interactions, or RNA-regulatory networks which is critical for expanding the complexity of the mammalian nervous system with implications in an expanding list of neuronal disorders. The proposed studies will investigate alternative splicing regulation in generating the distinct molecular programs in diverse neuronal cell types of mouse cortex. Information obtained in this project will provide insights into the fundamental mechanisms that controls such diversity as well as the functional consequences in defined, clinically relevant neuronal cell types.

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Chaolin Zhang, 2021 Genomics of ASD: Pathways to Genetic Therapies awardee

Chaolin Zhang, PhD, Associate Professor in Systems Biology will receive $1,200,000 over three years from The Simons Foundation Autism Research Initiative (SFARI) via the 2021 Genomics of ASD: Pathways to Genetic Therapies Initiative.  Grants funded through this Initiative are intended to leverage current knowledge about risk genes for autism spectrum disorder (ASD) into the development of new genetic therapies.  Leveraging the target discovery platform developed by the lab, Dr. Zhang’s research goal on this project focuses on restoring functional protein production using antisense oligos (ASOs) by modulating the alternative splicing as potential therapeutics. 

Read full article on Simons Foundation website.

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Wenyan Jiang from Dr. Saeed Tavazoie's Lab Chosen as a Blavatnik Award Finalist

Honoring outstanding postdoctoral scientists from academic research institutions across New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut, the Blavatnik Family Foundation and the New York Academy of Sciences announced the three Winners and six Finalists of the 2021 Blavatnik Regional Awards for Young Scientists. 

Biologists aspire to understand every gene’s contribution to an organism’s biology and behavior. Microbiologist Wenyan Jiang has helped repurpose the CRISPR-Cas system, an immune system of many bacteria, and co-opt it to upgrade the way many scientists control and examine the genome. Jiang developed a groundbreaking tool called CRISPR Adaptation-mediated Library Manufacturing (CALM), which exploits CRISPR RNA, a type of RNA naturally found in bacteria. CALM has enabled scientists to quickly determine the causal link between genes and bacterial behaviors such as antibiotic resistance and pathogenesis and pave the way for developing new, effective antimicrobial drugs. 

Read full article on Blavatnik Award site

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New award for Harris Wang

Harris Wang receives the Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise in Biomedical Science for the development and application of Multiplex Automated Genome Engineering (MAGE), a new framework for manipulating DNA to produce synthetic or engineered recombinant genetic material, and for his use of CRISPR technology to track and record transient cellular processes in the human gut microbiome. Born in Beijing, China, Wang is an associate professor at Columbia University in New York.

The 2022 Vilcek Foundation Prizes in Biomedical Science are a part of the Vilcek Foundation Prizes program. In 2022, the foundation is awarding the Vilcek Foundation Prizes in Biomedical Science, the Vilcek Foundation Prizes in Dance, and the Vilcek Prize for Excellence.

See full article on Vilcek Foundation site.

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New award for Tal Korem

Tal Korem, PhD, Systems Biology and Obstetrics & Gynecology, will receive $3,404,285 over five years from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development for "A large scale investigation of the vaginal metagenome and metabolome and their role in spontaneous preterm birth”.
 
This award will support the efforts of the Korem lab, along with Co-Investigators Dr. Anne-Catrin Uhlemann (Department of Medicine) and Dr. Ronald Wapner (Department of Obstetrics & Gynecology), to understand the role of the vaginal microbiome in preterm birth, the leading cause of neonatal morbidity and mortality. The investigators will generate a dataset of paired vaginal microbiome and metabolome measurements from samples collected along pregnancy in a large prospective cohort. Using this data, they will seek to identify new biomarkers for early identification of preterm birth and investigate the metabolic mechanisms that potentially underly it. 
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New Award for Barry Honing

Barry Honig, PhD, Systems Biology, will receive $2,025,000 over four years from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences for “Genome-Wide Structure-Based Analysis of Protein-Protein Interactions and Networks.”

Read full article in CUIMC Newsroom.

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Three VP&S Scientists Selected as Paul A. Marks Scholars

Three early-career scientists at VP&S—X. Shawn Liu (Physiology & Cellular Biophysics), Xuebing Wu(link is external and opens in a new window) (Medicine), and Nikhil Sharma (Molecular Pharmacology & Therapeutics)—have been selected as 2021 Paul A. Marks Scholars.

Established in 2006, the Paul A. Marks Scholars Program honors the extraordinary legacy of the late Paul A. Marks, MD’49(link is external and opens in a new window), by supporting the recruitment and retention of outstanding early career scientists with a primary tenure-track assistant professor appointment in one of the basic science departments at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons. The program funds up to three scientists at $100,000 per year for a period of three years.

Marks, who died in 2020, was an internationally renowned physician-scientist and an exceptional academic leader. Marks served as VP&S dean from 1970 to 1973 and vice president for medical sciences at VP&S from 1973 to 1980 before serving as president and CEO of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center from 1980 to 1999.

Through his pioneering investigations in cancer biology and genetics, Marks helped reveal how cancer cells arise. He developed new chemotherapy and chemoprevention agents, including suberoylanilide hydroxamic acid, which transformed the treatment of cutaneous T-cell lymphoma and is currently undergoing trials to treat an array of cancers.

Read full article in the HICCC Newsroom

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New Grant Awardees Push Innovation in Precision Medicine

The annual Precision Medicine Pilot Grants have been awarded to five teams of  researchers conducting innovative basic science, translational, and clinical research across multiple diseases. 

Jointly awarded by the Columbia Precision Medicine Initiative (CPMI), the Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center (HICCC), and the Irving Institute for Clinical and Translational Research (Irving Institute), the Precision Medicine Pilot Grants underscore Columbia’s commitment to supporting diverse, cross-disciplinary research targeting the promise of precision medicine.

The five winning teams are being led by faculty at Columbia’s Vagelos College of Physicians & Surgeons (VP&S), including: Srilaxmi Bearelly, MD, associate  professor of ophthalmology; Brian Henick, MD, assistant professor of medicine; Chi-Min Ho, PhD, assistant professor of microbiology and immunology; Yufeng Shen, PhD, associate professor of systems biology and of biomedical informatics; and Xuebing Wu, PhD, assistant professor of systems biology and of medicine. The projects being funded are focusing on a range of research, from novel cancer therapeutics to health disparities research. 

The Vagelos Precision Medicine Pilot Grant program is made possible by a generous donation from Roy and Diana Vagelos and is intended to support groundbreaking basic research in the field of precision medicine. Each research team receives $100,000 in funding for one year. The researchers will present their projects at an annual symposium for the precision medicine awards in fall 2022.

Read full article in the HICCC Newsroom

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New Award for Dennis Vitkup

Systems Biology will receive $3,829,859 over five years from the National Institute of Mental Health for “Discovery and Analysis of Brain Circuits and Cell Types Affected in Autism and Schizophrenia.” The project will be led by Dennis Vitkup, PhD, and Joseph Gogos, MD, PhD.

Read full article in CUIMC Newsroom.

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Melissa McKenzie, PhD, Receives ‘Pathway to Independence’ NIH Award

Melissa McKenzie, PhD

Melissa McKenzie, PhD, a second-year postdoctoral research scientist in the lab of Chaolin Zhang , PhD, has been awarded a K99/R00 “Pathway to Independence” award. This honor supports her goal to identify how alternative RNA splicing networks influence cortical interneuron specification.

Dr. McKenzie graduated summa cum laude from Cornell University where she was an Irving Tanner Dean’s scholar double majoring in biological sciences and philosophy. She joined the Zhang lab with a growing interest in leveraging emerging sequencing and other genomics technologies to investigate the role of RNA transcripts in the developing brain. 

This award program is designed to facilitate a timely transition of outstanding postdoctoral researchers or clinician-scientists from mentored research positions to independent, tenure-track or equivalent faculty positions, and to provide independent NIH research support during the transition that will help these individuals launch competitive, independent research careers.

Read more about Dr. McKenzie and research by the Zhang lab . 

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Xuebing Wu, PhD, Wins Pershing Square Sohn Prize

The 2021 Pershing Square Sohn Prize for Young Investigators in Cancer Research has been awarded to Xuebing Wu, PhD, for his innovative approaches to cancer research. The Pershing Square Sohn Prize is an annual award that provides early career scientists the freedom to take risks and pursue bold research at a stage when traditional funding is lacking. At Columbia University Irving Medical Center, Dr. Wu shares the designation with Christine Iok In Chio, PhD, whose work focuses on the biological mechanisms that drive pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma.

With the support from the Pershing Foundation, Dr. Wu and his lab aim to develop a technology for mutation-specific elimination of tumor cells, by integrating a highly programmable CRISPR “gene-editing” system with advanced machine learning algorithms. 

Read the full article in the HICCC Newsroom. 

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New Award for Tal Korem

Tal Korem, PhD, Systems Biology and Obstetrics & Gynecology, will receive $307,136 over five years from the National Institute of Nursing Research for a subaward of “The Role of Host-Microbial Interactions in Altering Preterm Birth Risk Among Black Women.”

Read the full article in the CUIMC Newsroom.

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Diversity and Severity of Autism Symptoms Linked to Mutation Locations

One of the most recognizable characteristics of autism is an amazing diversity of associated behavioral symptoms. Clinicians view autism as a broad spectrum of related disorders, and the origin of the disease's heterogeneity has puzzled scientists, doctors, and affected families for decades.

In a recent study, led by Dennis Vitkup, PhD, associate professor of systems biology, researchers have made an important step towards understanding the biological mechanisms underlying the cognitive and behavioral diversity of autism cases triggered by de novo truncating mutations. These mutations occur in parents’ germline cells and usually strongly disrupt the functions of target genes. De novo truncating mutations are responsible for close to 5% of autism cases and up to 20% of cases seen clinically.

Read the full article in the CUIMC Newsroom.

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Two Systems Biology GRAs Receive Awards

Tomasz Blazejewski has received the 2021 Dean's Award for Excellence in Research. His PhD research centered on generative models for biological sequences, a relatively new area at the interface of machine learning and biology. “I'm deeply appreciative to my advisor, Harris Wang,” says Blazejewski, “for giving me the freedom to investigate this relatively uncharted area, and to my thesis committee for its guidance as I tried to figure out the best approaches to the problem.”

Hanna Mendes Levitin has received the Titus M Coan Award for Excellence in Research. Her PhD research focused on extracting biological signals from-high dimensional data, specifically in the context of high-grade glioma, and on human tissue T cell activation. “I was surprised to receive the award,” says Levitin, “and believe it speaks to the excellence of my collaborators and mentors—especially my advisor, Dr. Peter Sims, and the entire Sims lab, as well as our collaborators, Dr. Donna Farber, Dr. Peter Canoll, and Dr. David Blei, and their respective labs.

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