Updates from the Chair | Microbiology and Immunology

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image of Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the bacterium that causes tuberculosis

NIH Funds Consortium to Accelerate Development of New TB Treatments

July 8, 2024

A new consortium co-led by Weill Cornell Medicine, has been awarded a five-year, $31 million grant from the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases to accelerate the development of faster, more effective treatment regimens for tuberculosis (TB). Investigators at the University of California, San Francisco; Johns Hopkins Medicine; and Vanderbilt University Medical Center comprise the other co-leads.

The Preclinical Design...

New Lab Test to Detect Persistent HIV Strains in Africa May Aid Search for Cure

July 2, 2024

A multinational team led by Weill Cornell Medicine investigators developed a test that will help measure the persistence of HIV in people affected by viral strains found predominantly in Africa—a vital tool in the search for an HIV cure that will benefit patients around the world.

The study, published July 2 in Nature Communications, helps fill a major gap in human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) research. Most HIV studies...

pink macrophages engulfing orange rodlike bacteria

An Immune Powerhouse: Dr. Carl Nathan on the Potential of Interferon-γ

April 22, 2024

Dr. Carl Nathan, chair of the department of microbiology and immunology and the R.A. Rees Pritchett Professor of Microbiology at Weill Cornell Medicine, has co-authored a review in Science on the immune protein interferon-gamma. He answered questions about its history and prospects as a therapeutic.

How was IFN-γ's basic biological role discovered?

In 1969-1971, while I was in medical school, I addressed a...

Structural Study Points the Way to Better Malaria Drugs

January 18, 2024

Structural insights into a potent antimalarial drug candidate’s interaction with the malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum have paved the way for drug-resistant malaria therapies, according to a new study by researchers at Weill Cornell Medicine and Van Andel Institute.

The antimalarial molecule, TDI-8304, is one of a new class of experimental therapeutics that targets the proteasome, an essential, multiprotein complex in P. falciparum...

Weill Cornell Medicine Receives Grants for Tuberculosis Drug Development

December 21, 2023

Weill Cornell Medicine researchers and the TB Drug Accelerator have received two grants totaling $6.8 million from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to study tuberculosis (TB) drug development. This effort will expediate finding new drug targets within the bacteria and identifying new lead compounds, two significant bottlenecks in TB drug development.

“These grants allow us to apply the assays we’ve developed in the last few years...

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