Tag: Mount Sinai Health System

Unveiling Asthma’s Molecular Secrets: How Blood Molecules Influence Airway Processes
Newswise — New York, NY (September 20, 2023) – A new study by researchers at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai has unraveled the intricate molecular interplay between systemic processes within the blood and localized processes within the airways of individuals with asthma.

This pioneering research opens doors to potential novel treatments targeting specific molecules, with the aim of providing more effective relief for asthma patients. The research findings were published today in Genome Medicine.

The study, which examined 341 participants comprising individuals with persistent asthma and non-asthmatic controls, used advanced transcriptomic sequencing techniques to analyze blood and nasal samples. Through this comprehensive approach, the researchers unveiled crucial molecules and processes that hold the key to understanding asthma better. Within the blood, the NK cell granule protein and perforin emerged as central players. In the nasal passages, the G3BP stress granule assembly factor 1 and InaD-like protein took on pivotal roles. Notably, the study underscored the profound influence of blood molecules on asthma by virtue of their effects on nasal molecules.

Supinda Bunyavanich, MD, MPH, MPhil, the Mount Sinai Professor in Allergy and Systems Biology, Deputy Director of the Elliot and Roslyn Jaffe Food Allergy Institute, and a senior author of the study, highlighted the importance of this holistic approach: “Our findings represent a groundbreaking connection between systemic factors in the bloodstream and localized factors in the airways, working collaboratively to drive asthma. This discovery marks a significant stride towards understanding core mechanisms of asthma, transcending the conventional focus on only the airways.”

However, Dr. Bunyavanich also sounded a note of caution, saying, “While these revelations provide invaluable insights into the molecular framework of asthma, it’s imperative to acknowledge that further research is needed before these breakthroughs can translate into immediate therapies.”

Key Highlights:
- The study offers an integrated perspective on the intricate relationship between systemic processes and airway-specific mechanisms in asthma.
- Prominent blood molecules, including the NK cell granule protein and perforin, appear to exert their influence on asthma through their interactions with nasal molecules like the G3BP stress granule assembly factor 1.
- The findings chart a path for future research endeavors, guiding the development of targeted asthma therapies that modulate these specific molecules.
- Given that asthma affects millions globally, the implications of this research are far-reaching. This study paves the way for a deeper comprehension of the disease, instilling optimism for the emergence of more efficacious therapeutic strategies in the foreseeable future.
For more details, read the full study in Genome Medicine.

This study was funded supported by the National Institutes of Health grant R01 AI118833.

Study details: Zhang L, Chun Y, Irizar H, et al. Integrated study of systemic and local airway transcriptomes in asthma reveals causal mediation of systemic effects by airway key drivers. Genome Medicine.

Dr. Bunyavanich has no conflicts of interest to disclose.

About the Mount Sinai Health System

Mount Sinai Health System is one of the largest academic medical systems in the New York metro area, with more than 43,000 employees working across eight hospitals, more than 400 outpatient practices, more than 300 labs, a school of nursing, and a leading school of medicine and graduate education. Mount Sinai advances health for all people, everywhere, by taking on the most complex health care challenges of our time—discovering and applying new scientific learning and knowledge; developing safer, more effective treatments; educating the next generation of medical leaders and innovators; and supporting local communities by delivering high-quality care to all who need it.

Through the integration of its hospitals, labs, and schools, Mount Sinai offers comprehensive health care solutions from birth through geriatrics, leveraging innovative approaches such as artificial intelligence and informatics while keeping patients’ medical and emotional needs at the center of all treatment. The Health System includes approximately 7,400 primary and specialty care physicians; 13 joint-venture outpatient surgery centers throughout the five boroughs of New York City, Westchester, Long Island, and Florida; and more than 30 affiliated community health centers. Hospitals within the System are consistently ranked by U.S. News & World Report‘s® “Best Hospitals” and “Best Children’s Hospitals.” The Mount Sinai Hospital is on the U.S. News & World Report‘s® “Best Hospitals” Honor Roll for 2023-2024.

For more information, visit https://www.mountsinai.org or find Mount Sinai on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.
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September 20, 2023
Mount Sinai Researchers Find Asian Americans to Have Significantly Higher Exposure to “Toxic Forever” Chemicals

Newswise — New York, NY (August 24, 2023) — Asian Americans have significantly higher exposure than other ethnic or racial groups to PFAS, a family of thousands of synthetic chemicals also known as “toxic forever” chemicals, Mount Sinai-led researchers report.

People frequently encounter PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances) in everyday life, and these exposures carry potentially adverse health impacts, according to the study published in Environmental Science and Technology, in the special issue “Data Science for Advancing Environmental Science, Engineering, and Technology.”

The scientists estimated a person’s total exposure burden to PFAS and accounted for the exposure heterogeneity (for example, different diets and behaviors) of different groups of people that could expose them to different sets of PFAS. They found that Asian Americans had a significantly high PFAS exposure than all other U.S. ethnic or racial groups, and that the median exposure score for Asian Americans was 89 percent higher than for non-Hispanic whites.

This is the first time that researchers accounted for complex exposure sources of different groups of people to calculate a person’s exposure burden to PFAS. To achieve this, they used advanced psychometric and data science methods called mixture item response theory. The researchers analyzed human biomonitoring data from the U.S. National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, a representative sample of the U.S. population.

This research suggests that biomonitoring and risk assessment should consider an exposure metric that takes into consideration the fact that different groups of people are exposed to many different sources and patterns of PFAS. Based on these findings, these researches believe that exposure sources, such as dietary sources and occupational exposure, may underlie the disparities in exposure burden. This will be an important topic of future work, as it is difficult to trace exposure sources to PFAS because they are so ubiquitous.

“We found that if we used a customized burden scoring approach, we could uncover some disparities in PFAS exposure burden across population sub-groups,” said Shelley Liu, PhD, Associate Professor of Population Health Science and Policy at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. “These disparities are hidden if we use a one-size-fits-all approach to quantifying everyone’s exposure burden. In order to advance precision environmental health, we need to optimally and equitably quantify exposure burden to PFAS mixtures, to ensure that our exposure burden metric used are fair and informative for all people.”

PFAS pollution is a major health concern, and nearly all Americans have detectable levels of PFAS chemicals in their blood. PFAS are ubiquitous, and are used in products that resist heat, oil, stains, grease, and water. The Biden administration has allocated $9 billion to PFAS clean-up, and in March 2023, the Environmental Protection Agency proposed the first enforceable federal standards to regulate PFAS contamination in public drinking water.

In the future, Dr. Liu’s team plans to incorporate toxicity information on each PFAS chemical into exposure burden scoring, to further evaluate disparities in toxicity-informed exposure burden in vulnerable groups and population subgroups.

The research was funded by the National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) R03ES033374 and National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) K25HD104918.

About the Mount Sinai Health System

Mount Sinai Health System is one of the largest academic medical systems in the New York metro area, with more than 43,000 employees working across eight hospitals, over 400 outpatient practices, nearly 300 labs, a school of nursing, and a leading school of medicine and graduate education. Mount Sinai advances health for all people, everywhere, by taking on the most complex health care challenges of our time — discovering and applying new scientific learning and knowledge; developing safer, more effective treatments; educating the next generation of medical leaders and innovators; and supporting local communities by delivering high-quality care to all who need it.

Through the integration of its hospitals, labs, and schools, Mount Sinai offers comprehensive health care solutions from birth through geriatrics, leveraging innovative approaches such as artificial intelligence and informatics while keeping patients’ medical and emotional needs at the center of all treatment. The Health System includes approximately 7,300 primary and specialty care physicians; 13 joint-venture outpatient surgery centers throughout the five boroughs of New York City, Westchester, Long Island, and Florida; and more than 30 affiliated community health centers. We are consistently ranked by U.S. News & World Report’s Best Hospitals, receiving high “Honor Roll” status, and are highly ranked: No. 1 in Geriatrics and top 20 in Cardiology/Heart Surgery, Diabetes/Endocrinology, Gastroenterology/GI Surgery, Neurology/Neurosurgery, Orthopedics, Pulmonology/Lung Surgery, Rehabilitation, and Urology. New York Eye and Ear Infirmary of Mount Sinai is ranked No. 12 in Ophthalmology. U.S. News & World Report’s “Best Children’s Hospitals” ranks Mount Sinai Kravis Children’s Hospital among the country’s best in several pediatric specialties.

For more information, visit https://www.mountsinai.org or find Mount Sinai on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

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August 24, 2023
Cigarette Smokers More at Risk for Tobacco Dependence Than Users of Smokeless Tobacco or Multiple Tobacco Products

BYLINE: Marlene Naanes

Newswise — New York, NY (July 27, 2023) – Cigarette smokers have higher odds of tobacco dependence than those who vape or use a variety of types of tobacco products, according to a Mount Sinai study published in July in Nicotine & Tobacco Research.

The findings suggest that tailored tobacco cessation programs are needed for people with different tobacco use habits. The researchers identified three clear types of tobacco users: those who predominantly smoke cigarettes, those who predominantly use smokeless tobacco, and those who predominantly use a combination of cigarettes, e-cigarettes, and cigars.

This discovery is important for tailoring tobacco use reduction and cessation programs to have better success. For example, people who mostly smoke cigarettes would be best served by focusing efforts on reducing their tobacco dependence, while others would be best helped with interventions that increase their likelihood of quitting tobacco use by preventing them from transitioning to only, or predominantly, smoking cigarettes, in addition to outright quitting.

“With the evolving landscape of tobacco product varieties, our findings are important because it is imperative that we understand which types of tobacco uses lead to dependency, informing cessation program designs and increasing their success,” said the study’s senior author, Bian Liu, PhD, Associate Professor of Population Health Science and Policy at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and member of the Institute for Translational Epidemiology and The Tisch Cancer Institute of the Tisch Cancer Center at Mount Sinai.

Given the increasing availability of diverse tobacco products, many individuals are likely to use multiple tobacco products and to engage in product switch and substitution. This has complicated tobacco cessation efforts aimed at reducing the health burden and economic costs associated with tobacco use and dependence. The lack of research in this area highlighted the need to use novel approaches and richer sources of information, such as that from the Population Assessment of Tobacco and Health (PATH) study, to explore and understand tobacco use and tobacco dependence profiles.

In this study, Mount Sinai researchers examined tobacco use profiles across four PATH surveys from 2013 to 2018. The scientists identified tobacco use profiles through intricate analysis and investigated the longitudinal association between tobacco use and dependency, identifying the subgroups with a high risk of dependency.

“As individuals may change their habits over time, future studies should examine patterns of tobacco use changes, including whether people’s changing habits differ by sociodemographic factors, and we should investigate how these changes impact tobacco dependency over time in the context of other smoking behaviors, including attempting to quit, relapse, and smoking cessation,” said the study’s first author, Lihua Li, PhD, Associate Professor of Population Health Science and Policy at Icahn Mount Sinai and member of The Tisch Cancer Institute and Institute for Health Care Delivery Science.

About the Mount Sinai Health System

Mount Sinai Health System is one of the largest academic medical systems in the New York metro area, with more than 43,000 employees working across eight hospitals, over 400 outpatient practices, nearly 300 labs, a school of nursing, and a leading school of medicine and graduate education. Mount Sinai advances health for all people, everywhere, by taking on the most complex health care challenges of our time — discovering and applying new scientific learning and knowledge; developing safer, more effective treatments; educating the next generation of medical leaders and innovators; and supporting local communities by delivering high-quality care to all who need it.

Through the integration of its hospitals, labs, and schools, Mount Sinai offers comprehensive health care solutions from birth through geriatrics, leveraging innovative approaches such as artificial intelligence and informatics while keeping patients’ medical and emotional needs at the center of all treatment. The Health System includes approximately 7,300 primary and specialty care physicians; 13 joint-venture outpatient surgery centers throughout the five boroughs of New York City, Westchester, Long Island, and Florida; and more than 30 affiliated community health centers. We are consistently ranked by U.S. News & World Report’s Best Hospitals, receiving high “Honor Roll” status, and are highly ranked: No. 1 in Geriatrics and top 20 in Cardiology/Heart Surgery, Diabetes/Endocrinology, Gastroenterology/GI Surgery, Neurology/Neurosurgery, Orthopedics, Pulmonology/Lung Surgery, Rehabilitation, and Urology. New York Eye and Ear Infirmary of Mount Sinai is ranked No. 12 in Ophthalmology. U.S. News & World Report’s “Best Children’s Hospitals” ranks Mount Sinai Kravis Children’s Hospital among the country’s best in several pediatric specialties.

For more information, visit https://www.mountsinai.org or find Mount Sinai on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

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July 26, 2023
Immunotherapy After Surgery Provides Significant, Durable Benefit for High-Risk Bladder Patients

Newswise — New York, NY (February 17, 2023)—Immunotherapy after surgery increased bladder cancer patients’ chance of staying cancer-free compared to patients who received a placebo, according to clinical trial results shared in a late-breaking oral presentation at the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) 2023 Genitourinary Cancers Symposium in February.

Matthew Galsky, MD, Co-Director of the Center of Excellence for Bladder Cancer at The Tisch Cancer Institute at Mount Sinai, presented three-year follow-up results from the Phase 3 CheckMate 274 trial. Patients on the trial had urothelial cancer of the bladder or upper urinary tract and had tumor features indicating a high risk for recurrence.

“Adjuvant nivolumab became a standard of care based on the initial results of CheckMate 274,” Dr. Galsky said. “These results, showing patients’ continued survival three years out, reinforce adjuvant nivolumab as a standard of care for patients with muscle-invasive urothelial cancer of the bladder or upper urinary tract. Normally, patients with this cancer face a high chance of recurrence, especially within the first three years after surgical removal of the bladder or kidney.”

This new data showed that at approximately three years of follow-up, nivolumab increased these patients’ chance of staying cancer-free after surgery compared to patients who received a placebo. The average length of time before relapse doubled in patients who received nivolumab, which is a monoclonal antibody immune checkpoint inhibitor that harnesses the immune system to fight cancer. For a subset of clinical trial patients who received the immunotherapy, disease-free survival was more than six times that of patients on placebo.

Among the 699 patients in the trial, half received nivolumab, and the other half received a placebo every two weeks for one year. Adjuvant nivolumab versus placebo was not associated with a detriment to quality of life. This trial was conducted with support from Bristol Myers Squibb, the maker of the immunotherapy, in collaboration with ONO Pharmaceutical Company Ltd.

About the Mount Sinai Health System

Mount Sinai Health System is one of the largest academic medical systems in the New York metro area, with more than 43,000 employees working across eight hospitals, over 400 outpatient practices, nearly 300 labs, a school of nursing, and a leading school of medicine and graduate education. Mount Sinai advances health for all people, everywhere, by taking on the most complex health care challenges of our time — discovering and applying new scientific learning and knowledge; developing safer, more effective treatments; educating the next generation of medical leaders and innovators; and supporting local communities by delivering high-quality care to all who need it.

Through the integration of its hospitals, labs, and schools, Mount Sinai offers comprehensive health care solutions from birth through geriatrics, leveraging innovative approaches such as artificial intelligence and informatics while keeping patients’ medical and emotional needs at the center of all treatment. The Health System includes approximately 7,300 primary and specialty care physicians; 13 joint-venture outpatient surgery centers throughout the five boroughs of New York City, Westchester, Long Island, and Florida; and more than 30 affiliated community health centers. We are consistently ranked by U.S. News & World Report‘s Best Hospitals, receiving high “Honor Roll” status, and are highly ranked: No. 1 in Geriatrics and top 20 in Cardiology/Heart Surgery, Diabetes/Endocrinology, Gastroenterology/GI Surgery, Neurology/Neurosurgery, Orthopedics, Pulmonology/Lung Surgery, Rehabilitation, and Urology. New York Eye and Ear Infirmary of Mount Sinai is ranked No. 12 in Ophthalmology. U.S. News & World Report’s “Best Children’s Hospitals” ranks Mount Sinai Kravis Children’s Hospital among the country’s best in several pediatric specialties. The Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai is one of three medical schools that have earned distinction by multiple indicators: It is consistently ranked in the top 20 by U.S. News & World Report‘s “Best Medical Schools,” aligned with a U.S. News & World Report “Honor Roll” Hospital, and top 20 in the nation for National Institutes of Health funding and top 5 in the nation for numerous basic and clinical research areas. Newsweek’s “The World’s Best Smart Hospitals” ranks The Mount Sinai Hospital as No. 1 in New York and in the top five globally, and Mount Sinai Morningside in the top 20 globally.

For more information, visit https://www.mountsinai.org or find Mount Sinai on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

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February 17, 2023
Mount Sinai Phillips School of Nursing Welcomes the Classes of 2022 in Graduation Ceremony

Newswise — The Mount Sinai Phillips School of Nursing is celebrating two graduating 2022 classes, August and December, with a total of 150 students. The graduation ceremony will take place on Thursday, December 15, at 4 pm at The Mount Sinai Hospital, Annenberg Building, Stern Auditorium (1468 Madison Ave. NY, NY 10029).

These classes are the first to graduate from the School’s new, cutting-edge facility in East Harlem. It includes a high-tech simulation lab and classrooms to prepare nurses to meet the health care challenges of the day. Graduates come from all over the country, represent a variety of backgrounds and ages, and have different reasons for wanting to become nurses.

All graduates of the 2022 class are a part of the Accelerated Bachelor of Science in Nursing (ABSN), a program to support and train nurses with the flexibility they need to succeed. It is one of two programs the school offers, along with an RN-to-BSN program. All of this year’s graduates have received offers for positions at the Mount Sinai Health System.

“It is definitely a unique time for nursing, as our health care landscape is ever-changing and evolving in response to highly critical situations. But it’s every part of who these graduates are becoming, and I thank each student and graduate for rising to the challenge with such courage,” said Todd Ambrosia, DNP, MSN, MBA, APRN, FNP-BC, FNAP, Dean of the Mount Sinai Phillips School of Nursing and Vice President for Nursing Academic Affairs, Mount Sinai Health System. “For all of us, if there was ever a time when we needed to come together and say, ‘We will make space for humanity in our care, and let it transform us into a more compassionate, courageous, resilient community,’ this is the time. And we are the ones to do it.”

The graduation program will start with an introduction from Dean Ambrosia and processional of the faculty and graduating class, followed by greetings from Janet Green, Co-Chair of the Mount Sinai Phillips School of Nursing Board and granddaughter of Seymour Phillips, for whom the school is named, and Beth Oliver, DNP, RN, FAAN, Senior Vice President and Chief Nursing Executive, Mount Sinai Health System.

The keynote address will be given by Lorraine McGrath, MA, RN-BC, Senior Director of Clinical Affairs, and Associate Professor at the Mount Sinai Phillips School of Nursing. Brittany Robinson, salutatorian from the class of December 2022 will be giving the student address. Following the presentation of the graduating class and conferring of degrees, Vice Dean Laly Joseph and Assistant Dean Vivian Lien will distribute awards to graduating students and Lynn Rubenstein, MA, RN, Professor Emeritus, Mount Sinai Phillips School of Nursing, will deliver the international pledge for nurses.

About the Mount Sinai Phillips School of Nursing

Founded in 1904, PSON is dedicated to the professional education of undergraduate nurses. Because it is part of the Mount Sinai Health System, students benefit from an impressive array of clinical experiences, in the hospital and in the community. The school offers an Accelerated BSN and a RN to BSN program. The school has designed a variety of innovative curricula responding to the special needs of working adults interested in entering the nursing profession, nurses interested in advancing their careers, and foreign-educated physicians and nurses who wish to pursue nursing practice in the United States. In 2014 and again in 2019, the National League of Nursing designated the school a Center of Excellence in Nursing Education in the category of Student Learning and Professional Development. Located in the East Harlem neighborhood of Manhattan, convenient to public transportation, the school currently enrolls close to 350 students. In addition to CCNE, the School is accredited in nursing for its baccalaureate program by the New York State Board of Regents and the Commissioner of Education.

About the Mount Sinai Health System

Mount Sinai Health System is one of the largest academic medical systems in the New York metro area, with more than 43,000 employees working across eight hospitals, over 400 outpatient practices, over 300 labs, a school of nursing, and a leading school of medicine and graduate education. Mount Sinai advances health for all people, everywhere, by taking on the most complex health care challenges of our time — discovering and applying new scientific learning and knowledge; developing safer, more effective treatments; educating the next generation of medical leaders and innovators; and supporting local communities by delivering high-quality care to all who need it.

Through the integration of its hospitals, labs, and schools, Mount Sinai offers comprehensive health care solutions from birth through geriatrics, leveraging innovative approaches such as artificial intelligence and informatics while keeping patients’ medical and emotional needs at the center of all treatment. The Health System includes approximately 7,300 primary and specialty care physicians; 13 joint-venture outpatient surgery centers throughout the five boroughs of New York City, Westchester, Long Island, and Florida; and more than 30 affiliated community health centers. We are consistently ranked by U.S. News & World Report‘s Best Hospitals, receiving high “Honor Roll” status, and are highly ranked: No. 1 in Geriatrics and top 20 in Cardiology/Heart Surgery, Diabetes/Endocrinology, Gastroenterology/GI Surgery, Neurology/Neurosurgery, Orthopedics, Pulmonology/Lung Surgery, Rehabilitation, and Urology. New York Eye and Ear Infirmary of Mount Sinai is ranked No. 12 in Ophthalmology. U.S. News & World Report’s “Best Children’s Hospitals” ranks Mount Sinai Kravis Children’s Hospital among the country’s best in several pediatric specialties. The Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai is one of three medical schools that have earned distinction by multiple indicators: It is consistently ranked in the top 20 by U.S. News & World Report‘s “Best Medical Schools,” aligned with a U.S. News & World Report “Honor Roll” Hospital, and top 20 in the nation for National Institutes of Health funding and top 5 in the nation for numerous basic and clinical research areas. Newsweek’s “World’s Best Smart Hospitals” ranks The Mount Sinai Hospital as No. 1 in New York City and in the top five globally, and Mount Sinai Morningside in the top 30 globally; Newsweek also ranks The Mount Sinai Hospital highly in 11 specialties in “World’s Best Specialized Hospitals,” and in “America’s Best Physical Rehabilitation Centers.” For more information, visit https://www.mountsinai.org or find Mount Sinai on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.

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December 16, 2022
Experimental Cancer Therapy Shows Success in More Than 70 Percent of Patients in Global Clinical Trials

Newswise — New York, NY (December 10, 2022) — A new therapy that makes the immune system kill bone marrow cancer cells was successful in as many as 73 percent of patients in two clinical trials, according to researchers from The Tisch Cancer Institute at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.

The therapy, known as a bispecific antibody, binds to both T cells and multiple myeloma cells and directs the T cells—white blood cells that can be enlisted to fight off diseases—to kill multiple myeloma cells. The researchers described this strategy as “bringing your army right to the enemy.”

The success of the off-the-shelf immunotherapy, called talquetamab, was even seen in patients whose cancer was resistant to all approved multiple myeloma therapies. It uses a different target than other approved therapies: a receptor expressed on the surface of cancer cells known as GPRC5D.

Talquetamab was tested in phase 1 and phase 2 trials. The phase 1 trial, which was reported in The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), established two recommended doses that were tested in the Phase 2 trial. The results of the Phase 2 trial were reported at the American Society of Hematology annual meeting on Saturday, December 10. The study participants had all been previously treated with at least three different therapies without achieving lasting remission, suggesting talquetamab could offer new hope for patients with hard-to-treat multiple myeloma.

“This means that almost three-quarters of these patients are looking at a new lease on life,” said Ajai Chari, MD, Director of Clinical Research in the Multiple Myeloma Program at The Tisch Cancer Institute and lead author of both studies. “Talquetamab induced a substantial response among patients with heavily pretreated, relapsed, or refractory multiple myeloma, the second-most-common blood cancer. It is the first bispecific agent targeting the protein GPRC5d in multiple myeloma patients.”

Nearly all patients with myeloma who receive standard therapies continually relapse. Patients who relapse or become resistant to all approved multiple myeloma therapies have a poor prognosis, so additional treatments are urgently needed. This study, while an early-phase trial designed to detect tolerability and find a safe dose, is an important step in meeting that need.

This Phase 1 clinical trial enrolled 232 patients at several cancer centers across the world between January 2018 and November 2021. Patients received a variety of doses of the therapy either intravenously or injected under their skin; future studies will focus on doses only administered under the skin either weekly or every other week

The efficacy and safety findings in the phase 1 study were validated in the phase 2 trial presented at ASH. The phase 2 trial included 143 patients treated on a weekly dose and 145 patients treated at a higher biweekly dose.

The overall response rate in these two groups was about 73 percent, Dr. Chari said. The response rate was maintained throughout various subgroups examined, with the exception of patients with a rare form of multiple myeloma that also extends to organs and soft tissues. More than 30 percent of patients in both groups had a complete response (no detection of myeloma-specific markers) or better, and nearly 60 percent had a “very good partial response” or better (indicating the cancer was substantially reduced but not necessarily down to zero).

The median time to a measurable response was approximately 1.2 months in both dosing groups and the median duration of response to date is 9.3 months with weekly dosing. Researchers are continuing to collect data on the duration of response in the group receiving 0.8 mg/kg every other week and for patients in both dosing groups who had a complete response or better.

Side effects were relatively frequent, but typically mild. About three-quarters of patients experienced cytokine release syndrome, which is a constellation of symptoms including fever that is common with immunotherapies. About 60 percent experienced skin-related side effects such as rash, about half reported taste changes, and about half reported nail disorders. The researchers said very few patients (5 to 6 percent) stopped talquetamab treatment because of side effects.

The response rate observed in the study, which Dr. Chari explained is higher than that for most currently accessible therapies, suggests talquetamab could offer a viable option for patients whose myeloma has stopped responding to most available therapies, offering a chance to extend life and benefit from other new and future therapies as they are developed.

These trials were sponsored and funded by Janssen.

About the Mount Sinai Health System

Mount Sinai Health System is one of the largest academic medical systems in the New York metro area, with more than 43,000 employees working across eight hospitals, over 400 outpatient practices, nearly 300 labs, a school of nursing, and a leading school of medicine and graduate education. Mount Sinai advances health for all people, everywhere, by taking on the most complex health care challenges of our time — discovering and applying new scientific learning and knowledge; developing safer, more effective treatments; educating the next generation of medical leaders and innovators; and supporting local communities by delivering high-quality care to all who need it.

Through the integration of its hospitals, labs, and schools, Mount Sinai offers comprehensive health care solutions from birth through geriatrics, leveraging innovative approaches such as artificial intelligence and informatics while keeping patients’ medical and emotional needs at the center of all treatment. The Health System includes approximately 7,300 primary and specialty care physicians; 13 joint-venture outpatient surgery centers throughout the five boroughs of New York City, Westchester, Long Island, and Florida; and more than 30 affiliated community health centers. We are consistently ranked by U.S. News & World Report‘s Best Hospitals, receiving high “Honor Roll” status, and are highly ranked: No. 1 in Geriatrics and top 20 in Cardiology/Heart Surgery, Diabetes/Endocrinology, Gastroenterology/GI Surgery, Neurology/Neurosurgery, Orthopedics, Pulmonology/Lung Surgery, Rehabilitation, and Urology. New York Eye and Ear Infirmary of Mount Sinai is ranked No. 12 in Ophthalmology. U.S. News & World Report’s “Best Children’s Hospitals” ranks Mount Sinai Kravis Children’s Hospital among the country’s best in several pediatric specialties. The Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai is one of three medical schools that have earned distinction by multiple indicators: It is consistently ranked in the top 20 by U.S. News & World Report‘s “Best Medical Schools,” aligned with a U.S. News & World Report “Honor Roll” Hospital, and top 20 in the nation for National Institutes of Health funding and top 5 in the nation for numerous basic and clinical research areas. Newsweek’s “The World’s Best Smart Hospitals” ranks The Mount Sinai Hospital as No. 1 in New York and in the top five globally, and Mount Sinai Morningside in the top 20 globally.

For more information, visit https://www.mountsinai.org or find Mount Sinai on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

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December 10, 2022
New Treatment for Moderate to Severe Atopic Dermatitis Shows Promising Long-Term Results

Newswise — Patients with moderate to severe atopic dermatitis who participated in a clinical trial of rocatinlimab—a novel, patient-tailored monoclonal antibody therapy—showed promising results both while taking the drug and up to 20 weeks after the therapy was stopped, Mount Sinai researchers reported in The Lancet.

The researchers said the results indicate that rocatinlimab has the potential to change the genetic makeup of a person’s atopic dermatitis for the long term, and possibly help sustain lasting results without continued use. Rocatinlimab inhibits OX40—an immune molecule involved in activating inflammatory cells that play a key role in the development of atopic dermatitis and other inflammatory diseases.

“Atopic dermatitis, the most common type of eczema, is a debilitating chronic inflammatory skin disease that affects 1 in 10 Americans and millions of people worldwide,” said Emma Guttman, MD, PhD, Waldman Professor and System Chair, The Kimberly and Eric J. Waldman Department of Dermatology; Director, Center of Excellence in Eczema; and Director, Laboratory of Inflammatory Skin Diseases, at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. “It often develops at a very young age, causing the skin to become inflamed, red, extremely itchy, painful, and very dry—all symptoms that greatly affect a patient’s quality of life. We are very optimistic about the results of this trial and the potential for disease modification and long-lasting effects to improve patients’ quality of life.”

In this phase 2b multicenter, double-blind, placebo-controlled study, 274 patients were recruited and (rocatinlimab: n=217; placebo: n=57) randomly assigned 1:1:1:1:1 to rocatinlimab every four weeks (150 mg or 600 mg) or every two weeks (300 mg or 600 mg) or subcutaneous placebo up to week 18, with an 18-week active-treatment extension and 20-week follow-up. This trial was conducted at 65 sites within the United States, Canada, Japan, and Germany.

Percent change from baseline in the Eczema Area and Severity Index (EASI) score was assessed as the primary endpoint at week 16, and significance versus placebo was achieved with all active rocatinlimab doses (-48% to -61%) doses compared to placebo (-15%). All active dose cohorts also continued improving after week 16, and most patients maintained the response for at least 20 weeks off treatment.

The results support rocatinlimab as a safe and effective treatment for moderate to severe atopic dermatitis, with potentially long-lasting efficacy and disease modification. Adverse events reported were generally similar between rocatinlimab groups. Common adverse events during the double-blind period included fever, chills, headache, aphthous ulcers (canker sores), and nausea.

“At week 36, all participants had been on the treatment for at least 18 weeks,” added Dr. Guttman, senior author of the study. “By this time, we saw that while the drug achieved the primary endpoints in all doses versus the placebo, it’s also a drug that improves over time, which is really unusual and unique among currently available treatment options.”

Researchers plan to continue this investigation in a phase 3 program in 2023. Future studies will also include a larger study population, longer follow-up, and exploration of combination therapy (such as rocatinlimab plus topical corticosteroids).

The trial is registered on ClinicalTrials.gov (NCT03703102).

About the Mount Sinai Health System

Mount Sinai Health System is one of the largest academic medical systems in the New York metro area, with more than 43,000 employees working across eight hospitals, over 400 outpatient practices, over 300 labs, a school of nursing, and a leading school of medicine and graduate education. Mount Sinai advances health for all people, everywhere, by taking on the most complex health care challenges of our time — discovering and applying new scientific learning and knowledge; developing safer, more effective treatments; educating the next generation of medical leaders and innovators; and supporting local communities by delivering high-quality care to all who need it.

Through the integration of its hospitals, labs, and schools, Mount Sinai offers comprehensive health care solutions from birth through geriatrics, leveraging innovative approaches such as artificial intelligence and informatics while keeping patients’ medical and emotional needs at the center of all treatment. The Health System includes approximately 7,300 primary and specialty care physicians; 13 joint-venture outpatient surgery centers throughout the five boroughs of New York City, Westchester, Long Island, and Florida; and more than 30 affiliated community health centers. We are consistently ranked by U.S. News & World Report‘s Best Hospitals, receiving high “Honor Roll” status, and are highly ranked: No. 1 in Geriatrics and top 20 in Cardiology/Heart Surgery, Diabetes/Endocrinology, Gastroenterology/GI Surgery, Neurology/Neurosurgery, Orthopedics, Pulmonology/Lung Surgery, Rehabilitation, and Urology. New York Eye and Ear Infirmary of Mount Sinai is ranked No. 12 in Ophthalmology. U.S. News & World Report’s “Best Children’s Hospitals” ranks Mount Sinai Kravis Children’s Hospital among the country’s best in several pediatric specialties. The Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai is one of three medical schools that have earned distinction by multiple indicators: It is consistently ranked in the top 20 by U.S. News & World Report‘s “Best Medical Schools,” aligned with a U.S. News & World Report “Honor Roll” Hospital, and top 20 in the nation for National Institutes of Health funding and top 5 in the nation for numerous basic and clinical research areas. Newsweek’s “World’s Best Smart Hospitals” ranks The Mount Sinai Hospital as No. 1 in New York City and in the top five globally, and Mount Sinai Morningside in the top 30 globally; Newsweek also ranks The Mount Sinai Hospital highly in 11 specialties in “World’s Best Specialized Hospitals,” and in “America’s Best Physical Rehabilitation Centers.” For more information, visit https://www.mountsinai.org or find Mount Sinai on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.

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December 9, 2022
New Tool for Estimating People’s Total Exposure to Potentially Harmful Chemicals Is Developed

Newswise — New York, NY (November 2, 2022) – A novel metric that estimates our “burden,” or cumulative exposure, to a family of thousands of synthetic chemicals that we encounter in everyday life with potentially adverse health impacts, has been created by a team of researchers at Mount Sinai.

In a paper published in Environmental Health Perspectives, the team reported that its sophisticated tool could have distinct advantages for epidemiologists and researchers who routinely measure exposure levels to this class of chemicals, known as PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances), which have been associated with high cholesterol, liver damage, thyroid disease, and hormone disorders.

“There are few existing methods to quantify total exposure burden of individuals to mixtures of PFAS chemicals that are found in our everyday lives,” says lead author Shelley Liu, PhD, Assistant Professor in the Center for Biostatistics, Department of Population Health Science and Policy, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. “For the first time we’ve developed a PFAS burden calculator that takes into account patterns of exposure to many chemicals within the PFAS family, and not just individual chemical concentrations which current methods are focused on. As a result, this robust tool could be extremely useful for biomonitoring by regulatory agencies, and for disease and health risk assessment.”

PFAS is a class of more than 5,000 chemicals whose fluorine-carbon bond gives them the ability to repel oil and water. That construct has made them an integral part of a growing number of industrial applications and consumer products in recent decades, such as stain and water repellents, Teflon nonstick pans, paints, cleaners, and food packaging. Moreover, PFAS chemicals do not disintegrate in the environment or in our bodies. Instead, they accumulate in our surroundings and in our blood, kidneys, and liver, as underscored by a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study in 2007 that found PFAS could be detected in the blood of 98 percent of the U.S. population.

Mount Sinai researchers used national biomonitoring data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey to develop their exposure burden score using item response theory. Item response theory was developed in the educational testing literature to score standardized tests, and Mount Sinai researchers are the first to use it in environmental epidemiology to develop an exposure burden score, highlighted by this transdisciplinary investigation. Specifically, they used serum concentrations from eight common PFAS chemicals taken from adults and children. By combining a participant’s core biomarker concentrations with their much broader “exposure pattern,” that is, their relative exposure to other PFAS biomarkers within the entire chemical class, researchers were able to estimate a cumulative or summary PFAS exposure burden. This statistical methodology can be accessed by other researchers and epidemiologists by simply plugging their data sets into the PFAS burden calculator, which is available online.

The benefits are significant. “We found our method enables comparisons of exposure burden to chemical mixtures across studies even if they do not measure the same set of chemicals, which supports harmonization across studies and consortia,” explains Dr. Liu, whose research is heavily focused on environmental health through latent variable modeling and longitudinal data analysis. Moreover, the calculator offers a straightforward way to include exposure biomarkers with low detection frequencies, and to reduce exposure measurement errors by considering both a participant’s concentrations and their exposure patterns to estimate exposure burden to chemical mixtures.

“By capturing individual biomarker variability, we’re essentially holding the exposure metric constant so it can be used for a variety of applications,” says Dr. Liu. “These could include, for example, looking across populations to determine if there are differences in exposure burden across racial/ethnic or socioeconomic strata, or if exposure burdens are the same between people in the United States or Canada. Or looking across physiological systems and health outcomes—such as cardiometabolic, hormonal, and immune—to see which are most perturbed by exposure to PFAS chemicals. This range of applications takes us well beyond anything currently available to the field of population health.”

Other co-authors in the study were from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, the Department of Psychology at Fordham University, and the Stroud Center at Columbia University. Dr. Liu’s research is supported by grants from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (K25HD104918) and National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (R03ES033374).

About the Mount Sinai Health System

Mount Sinai Health System is one of the largest academic medical systems in the New York metro area, with more than 43,000 employees working across eight hospitals, over 400 outpatient practices, nearly 300 labs, a school of nursing, and a leading school of medicine and graduate education. Mount Sinai advances health for all people, everywhere, by taking on the most complex health care challenges of our time — discovering and applying new scientific learning and knowledge; developing safer, more effective treatments; educating the next generation of medical leaders and innovators; and supporting local communities by delivering high-quality care to all who need it.

Through the integration of its hospitals, labs, and schools, Mount Sinai offers comprehensive health care solutions from birth through geriatrics, leveraging innovative approaches such as artificial intelligence and informatics while keeping patients’ medical and emotional needs at the center of all treatment. The Health System includes approximately 7,300 primary and specialty care physicians; 13 joint-venture outpatient surgery centers throughout the five boroughs of New York City, Westchester, Long Island, and Florida; and more than 30 affiliated community health centers. We are consistently ranked by U.S. News & World Report‘s Best Hospitals, receiving high “Honor Roll” status, and are highly ranked: No. 1 in Geriatrics and top 20 in Cardiology/Heart Surgery, Diabetes/Endocrinology, Gastroenterology/GI Surgery, Neurology/Neurosurgery, Orthopedics, Pulmonology/Lung Surgery, Rehabilitation, and Urology. New York Eye and Ear Infirmary of Mount Sinai is ranked No. 12 in Ophthalmology. U.S. News & World Report’s “Best Children’s Hospitals” ranks Mount Sinai Kravis Children’s Hospital among the country’s best in several pediatric specialties. The Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai is one of three medical schools that have earned distinction by multiple indicators: It is consistently ranked in the top 20 by U.S. News & World Report‘s “Best Medical Schools,” aligned with a U.S. News & World Report “Honor Roll” Hospital, and top 20 in the nation for National Institutes of Health funding and top 5 in the nation for numerous basic and clinical research areas. Newsweek’s “The World’s Best Smart Hospitals” ranks The Mount Sinai Hospital as No. 1 in New York and in the top five globally, and Mount Sinai Morningside in the top 20 globally.

For more information, visit https://www.mountsinai.org or find Mount Sinai on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

Mount Sinai Health System

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November 1, 2022