(Press-News.org) (New York, NY – October 26, 2023) – The Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai has received a $4.6 million gift from the Pershing Square Foundation to support women’s health research and advance careers for female scientists. Part of an original nearly $21 million gift that expanded a COVID-19 testing program for New York City schools and other organizations, this boost in women-focused initiatives connects the Pershing Square Foundation’s interest in supporting women in science to Mount Sinai’s leading researchers and key initiatives in gender-based science and health.
“We first worked with the incredible team at Mount Sinai in 2021 after identifying a gap in critically needed COVID-19 testing at New York City public schools,” says Bill Ackman, co-Trustee of the Pershing Square Foundation. “The team at Mount Sinai understood the challenge, immediately rose to the occasion, and quickly built a robust testing operation from scratch which allowed children in New York City to safely return to school. We’re thrilled to partner with Mount Sinai, again in a time of critical need, to address the long-overdue health inequity that burdens women and women’s health science. The Pershing Square Foundation is proud to support female physicians and researchers in all fields and contribute to closing the knowledge gap in women’s health.”
The gift will support critically needed discovery studies in four important areas across a female’s lifespan: endometriosis, cervical cancer, preeclampsia, and menopause. Michal Elovitz, MD, inaugural Dean for Women’s Health Research and founding Director of the Women’s Biomedical Research Institute, will drive these four initiatives. A transdisciplinary team that leverages diverse expertise across the Mount Sinai Health System will lead discovery. It includes experts in neurology (Fanny Elahi, MD, PhD), immunology (Miriam Merad, MD, PhD), oncology (Stephanie V. Blank, MD; Dmitriy Zamarin, MD, PhD), gynecology (Susan S. Khalil, MD; Konstantin Zakashansky, MD), and others devoted to advancing women’s health science.
These conditions have remained largely understudied, yet impact millions of women:
Nearly 200 million girls and women worldwide experience endometriosis, including pain and loss of work and wages, yet no new class of drugs has been approved for the disease in the last two decades.
While preeclampsia remains a leading contributor to the growing crisis of maternal morbidity and mortality, there is still no effective treatment for this disease.
More than half the population will experience menopause, and with that biological event, women will experience short- and long-term changes in cognitive function. Yet little is known about how this time of hormonal transition interacts with aging to impact neurological health.
Despite the promise of the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine, premalignant and malignant lesions of the cervix continue to create inequitable health burdens for women and especially women of color.
This funding will serve to accelerate discovery for these female-specific conditions, supporting studies that address health burdens at different points across the lifespan with the hope of broadening the impact of scientific discovery for more women. The ultimate goal of these studies is to reveal key biology of these conditions, thus providing new opportunities for reliable and rigorous diagnostics and, importantly, novel therapeutics.
“As the Dean for Women’s Health Research, I am empowered—along with an amazing group of clinicians, researchers, and scientists at Mount Sinai—to create a new paradigm for advancing women’s health,” said Dr. Elovitz. “The lack of scientific focus on reproductive and gynecological conditions, as well as the failure to fully understand sex-specific biology across many other diseases, has led to dramatically unequal outcomes for women, not just during pregnancy but across their lifespan. In addition to female-specific diseases, women suffer at a greater rate from many other autoimmune, neurological, and mental health disorders. But understanding the basic biology that drives female-specific conditions and sex-specific drivers of health outcomes for women is a key obstacle to meaningful improvements in health outcomes for women. With the support of this grant from the Pershing Square Foundation, we will be able to significantly advance our understanding of women’s health.”
Additional earmarks for the grant include $1 million for the Distinguished Scholars Award Program of Mount Sinai’s Office of Gender Equity in Science and Medicine. While women represent half of early-career researchers at the assistant professor level, there is a sharp drop in their advancement, and only one third of mid-career or associate professors are women, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges. Distinguished Scholars directly addresses the key reasons for this weak pipeline by providing career mentorship and sponsorship, as well as stipends and other aid for women to grow their research programs and maintain momentum as they integrate family caretaking into their careers. With this grant, over the course of four years, 20 female assistant professors will become Distinguished Scholars. This will significantly expand the program’s ability to help women progress from assistant to associate professors.
“With the support of the Pershing Square Foundation, we will help women not only climb the academic ladder, but also become academic leaders and cultivate more gender-equitable, inclusive environments,” said Carol Horowitz, MD, Dean for Gender Equity in Science and Medicine and Director of the Institute for Health Equity Research. “We will expand the mentorship, guidance, and counsel we provide these talented women, and help them form a supportive network to accelerate their success and impact. The continued support of programs and research that further gender equity in health care is a testament to Mount Sinai’s commitment to advance women in science, but also speaks volumes about the greater need of investment in this area of academic medicine.”
About the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai
The Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai is internationally renowned for its outstanding research, educational, and clinical care programs. It is the sole academic partner for the eight- member hospitals* of the Mount Sinai Health System, one of the largest academic health systems in the United States, providing care to a large and diverse patient population.
Ranked 14th nationwide in National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding and among the 99th percentile in research dollars per investigator according to the Association of American Medical Colleges, Icahn Mount Sinai has a talented, productive, and successful faculty. More than 3,000 full-time scientists, educators, and clinicians work within and across 44 academic departments and 36 multidisciplinary institutes, a structure that facilitates tremendous collaboration and synergy. Our emphasis on translational research and therapeutics is evident in such diverse areas as genomics/big data, virology, neuroscience, cardiology, geriatrics, as well as gastrointestinal and liver diseases.
Icahn Mount Sinai offers highly competitive MD, PhD, and Master’s degree programs, with current enrollment of approximately 1,300 students. It has the largest graduate medical education program in the country, with more than 2,000 clinical residents and fellows training throughout the Health System. In addition, more than 550 postdoctoral research fellows are in training within the Health System.
A culture of innovation and discovery permeates every Icahn Mount Sinai program. Mount Sinai’s technology transfer office, one of the largest in the country, partners with faculty and trainees to pursue optimal commercialization of intellectual property to ensure that Mount Sinai discoveries and innovations translate into healthcare products and services that benefit the public.
Icahn Mount Sinai’s commitment to breakthrough science and clinical care is enhanced by academic affiliations that supplement and complement the School’s programs.
Through the Mount Sinai Innovation Partners (MSIP), the Health System facilitates the real-world application and commercialization of medical breakthroughs made at Mount Sinai. Additionally, MSIP develops research partnerships with industry leaders such as Merck & Co., AstraZeneca, Novo Nordisk, and others.
The Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai is located in New York City on the border between the Upper East Side and East Harlem, and classroom teaching takes place on a campus facing Central Park. Icahn Mount Sinai’s location offers many opportunities to interact with and care for diverse communities. Learning extends well beyond the borders of our physical campus, to the eight hospitals of the Mount Sinai Health System, our academic affiliates, and globally.
* Mount Sinai Health System member hospitals: The Mount Sinai Hospital; Mount Sinai Beth Israel; Mount Sinai Brooklyn; Mount Sinai Morningside; Mount Sinai Queens; Mount Sinai South Nassau; Mount Sinai West; and New York Eye and Ear Infirmary of Mount Sinai.
About Pershing Square Foundation
The Pershing Square Foundation (PSF) was established in 2006 to support exceptional leaders and innovative organizations that tackle important social issues and deliver scalable and sustainable impact across the globe. PSF has committed $500+ million in grants and social investments across a number of fields, including health and medicine, education, economic development and social justice. Bill Ackman and Neri Oxman are the co-trustees of the Foundation.
END
Mount Sinai receives $4.6 million from Pershing Square Foundation to support women’s health research and careers for women in science
2023-10-26
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
Case Western Reserve University researcher awarded $3.5 million federal grant
2023-10-26
CLEVELAND—A researcher from the Case Western Reserve University Frances Payne Bolton School of Nursing has been awarded a $3.5 million federal grant for research to improve sleep health and glucose management in young adults with type 1 diabetes.
Positive findings could lead to adding the intervention in current care protocols. The ultimate goal is to improve outcomes for a population that struggles to maintain blood-sugar (glycemic) targets, compared to other age groups.
“Young adults with type 1 diabetes are a high-risk group, and I am committed to improving their ...
Study aims to include truckers when redefining trucking in the age of automated vehicles
2023-10-26
AMHERST, Mass. — Last year, trucks moved 73%—11.5 billion tons—of the freight in the U.S., making trucks—and truckers—crucial to the U.S. economy. With automation in trucking projected to grow 22% over the next 10 years, a team of University of Massachusetts Amherst researchers has received a grant to explore how automation will affect the role of American long-haul truckers.
An interdisciplinary group of researchers led by Shannon Roberts, associate professor of mechanical and industrial engineering, has been awarded nearly $2 million over four years by the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Future of Work Program.
“We know ...
An unexpected link between 2 schizophrenia risk proteins
2023-10-26
COLUMBUS, Ohio – The discovery of a physical interaction between two proteins in brain cells that can be traced in mice to control of movement, anxiety and memory could one day open the door to development of new schizophrenia treatment strategies, researchers say.
The research group is the first to determine that the two proteins, both among the dozens of proteins related to risk for the development of schizophrenia, bind to each other under normal conditions in multiple regions of the brain, ...
ERC Synergy Grants back 37 teams to tackle complex scientific questions
2023-10-26
Thirty-seven research groups will receive €395 million in total to address some of the world’s most formidable research problems spanning a range of scientific disciplines. The funding helps groups of outstanding researchers to pool different skills, knowledge and resources to push the frontiers of our knowledge. The ERC Synergy Grant scheme is part of the EU's research and innovation programme, Horizon Europe.
Iliana Ivanova, Commissioner for Innovation, Research, Culture, Education and Youth, said: “Some scientific questions are too complex to be addressed by researchers working on their own. Challenges such as climate change or ...
New research reveals alarming privacy and security threats in Smart Homes
2023-10-26
An international team of researchers, led by IMDEA Networks and Northeastern University in collaboration with NYU Tandon School of Engineering, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, IMDEA Software, University of Calgary, and the International Computer Science Institute, has unveiled groundbreaking findings on the security and privacy challenges posed by the ever-growing prevalence of opaque and technically complex Internet of Things (IoT) devices in smart homes.
Smart Homes: Trusted and Secure Environments?
Smart homes are becoming increasingly interconnected, ...
Machine can quickly produce needed cells for cancer treatment
2023-10-26
PULLMAN, Wash. -- A new tool to rapidly grow cancer-killing white blood cells could advance the availability of immunotherapy, a promising therapy which harnesses the power of the body’s immune response to target cancer cells.
Washington State University researchers have developed a minifridge-sized bioreactor that is able to manufacture the cells, called T cells, at 95% of the maximum growth rate – about 30% faster than current technologies. The researchers report on their work in the journal Biotechnology Progress. They developed it using T cells from cattle, developed by co-author Bill Davis of WSU’s ...
ERC synergy grant: Multidisciplinary research bridges physics and biology at ISTA and in France
2023-10-26
The Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA) receives its second generous ERC Synergy Grant. ISTA Professor Gašper Tkačik is one of three awarded researchers to join forces on unraveling the secrets of gene regulation during mammalian development.
Three research groups from Austria and France team up to crack open the black box of early mammalian development. Now endowed with a prestigious Synergy Grant from the European Research Council (ERC), Gašper Tkačik (ISTA), Thomas Gregor (Institut Pasteur), ...
A new era for accurate, rapid COVID-19 testing
2023-10-26
Osaka, Japan – A rapid, accurate way of testing for COVID-19 infection would be a big step in overcoming the virus’ hold over our society. Now, in an article published in Lab on a Chip, Japanese researchers have developed a promising solution: a novel platform that couples nanopore technology with artificial intelligence.
What is a nanopore? A nanopore is a miniscule hole in a thin substrate, often a silicon wafer. A nanopore might range from several nanometers to several hundred nanometers in diameter — a scale small enough to work with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes ...
75% of exclusive hardwood may be illegally harvested
2023-10-26
The tropical wood type ipê is popular for building exclusive wooden decks, and in North America and Europe, the demand for the material has increased sharply. Now, a study from Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, shows that more than three-quarters of all ipê from the top producing region in Brazil could have been harvested illegally. "The study reveals where in the chain the greatest risks lie. It can be a tool to counteract illegal logging," says Caroline S.S. Franca, PhD student at Chalmers.
Ipê is one of the world's hardest woods. It is therefore particularly suitable for building ...
Farmed wolffish could be on your plate in the future
2023-10-26
In the future, farmed wolffish could start appearing on fish counters. However, a new thesis from the University of Gothenburg shows that this fish, with its delicate, firm flesh, needs somewhat different farming conditions compared to salmon.
The salmon farms of today have created a steady supply of fish in our supermarkets. The nutritional content of salmon, its rapid growth and low cost, have made it a popular fish in many households. But only farming one species can create vulnerabilities in terms of food security. Today Sweden ...