Updates from the Chair | Microbiology and Immunology

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Commentary: Stemming the Tide of Resistant Infections is Tough but Not Intractable

April 23, 2020

The COVID-19 pandemic is a striking reminder that viruses scorn borders. Disease-causing bacteria ignore borders, too—but with a difference. While scientists are still seeking to discover antiviral drugs, since the end of World War II the public has had effective antibiotics to fight bacteria. Yet, as bacteria are spreading around the world, so is resistance to these life-saving drugs—a phenomenon known as antimicrobial resistance (AMR).

We can defeat runaway AMR, but it will take...

Helping Hand

May 8, 2019

Dr. Omar Vandal, Ph.D. ’07, came to Weill Cornell Graduate School of Medical Sciences determined to make a difference in the world—focusing his studies on tuberculosis, the world’s most deadly infectious disease and one that sickens an estimated half-million people each year in his homeland of Pakistan. He did innovative doctoral research, identifying a key protein that the TB bacterium needs to survive within the host cell—information that may help scientists develop better drugs. But...

New Antimicrobial Resistance Mechanism Uncovered in Hunt for TB New Drug

February 6, 2019

An investigation by Weill Cornell Medicine scientists has yielded two breakthroughs in the pursuit of combating growing resistance to tuberculosis treatments. First, the team discovered a new strategy that tuberculosis-causing bacteria use to evade treatment. They also identified an experimental compound that might help circumvent drug resistance to the most widely used tuberculosis drug, isoniazid.

Tuberculosis is the top infectious disease killer worldwide and growing resistance to...

Weakening Tuberculosis Bacteria’s Defenses May Speed Treatment and Thwart Drug Resistance

August 13, 2018

By sabotaging one of the tuberculosis bacterium’s defenses against antibiotics, Weill Cornell Medicine investigators may have found a way to accelerate treatment for the disease and possibly overcome growing resistance to existing therapies.

In a study published April 25 in Science Translational Medicine, Dr. Dirk Schnappinger and colleagues found a way to...

Study: Experimental Compound Protects Transplanted Hearts from Rejection

December 12, 2016

This image shows a section of a transplanted heart in a mouse that was given only CTLA4-Ig, a standard anti-rejection therapy. A large number of infiltrating immune cells are visible by their blue-staining nuclei, showing that the heart is undergoing rejection. Heart muscle cell nuclei are also stained blue. All images: “Brief treatment with a highly selective immunoproteasome inhibitor promotes long-term cardiac allograft acceptance in mice.” Karreci, Esilida Sula. PNAS, 2016. doi: 10....