Dr. Valentin Fuster: “I Want to Be On the Frontline”

Dr. Valentin Fuster’s workday begins at 5:00 am – but for the first fifteen minutes, he does absolutely nothing except think about the hours ahead of him. “Basically I program the day in terms of priorities,” he says, “to be sure that when I start, I know exactly where I am.” Read more [...]

Balancing Act

Laparoscopic surgery pioneer, educator, researcher – Dr. Celia Divino wears many hats, but still keeps her equilibrium.   By P.H.I.Berroll While chatting with a visitor in her office, Celia Divino picks up a tiny plastic rake and slowly pulls it back and forth across a miniature sandbox on her desk. “It's a Japanese garden,” Dr. Divino explains. “When you're stressed out, you rake it and it relaxes you. It's kind of Zen.” It’s easy to see how Dr. Divino would be interested Read more [...]

Compassion and Commitment

“A sense of shared humanity” motivates Dr. David Nichols. By P.H.I.Berroll In the course of his career, David Nichols, M.D., has had no shortage of honors and acclaim. Still, upon hearing that he would receive Mount Sinai’s Saul Horowitz, Jr. Memorial Award, Dr. Nichols says he reacted with “a combination of tremendous thrill and total disbelief – because I did not expect to win.” For all his modesty, it’s easy to see why Dr. Nichols, who is vice dean for education and professor Read more [...]

This Is Spinal Surgery: Safe and Effective

Drs. Andrew Hecht and Sean McCance work on the cutting edge of minimally invasive back surgery.   By P.H.I.Berroll For Sean McCance, one of the biggest innovations in his field, spinal surgery, over the last ten years has been the XLIF cage. XLIF, or lateral lumbar interbody fusion, is a minimally invasive surgical procedure performed through the patient's side, in order to avoid the major back muscles. The cage, a small rectangular-shaped device, is inserted between the patient’s vertebrae Read more [...]

Yesterday’s Breakthrough – Today’s Common Practice

By P.H.I.Berroll It’s one thing to research and develop a new surgical procedure. It’s quite another to put it into practice, over and over again. The surgeons of Mount Sinai have been leaders in the use of the DaVinci robotic system and other minimally invasive techniques. Here, three of them talk about how those innovations have impacted their work. Dr. Eric M. Genden is no stranger to innovative surgical procedures – he was the first surgeon in the United States to perform a jaw Read more [...]

The “Odd Couple” of Virus Research

It would be hard to find two more sharply contrasting individuals than Adolfo García-Sastre, Ph.D. and Peter Palese, Ph.D. In appearance, Dr. Palese is every bit the sober, buttoned-down man of science; Dr. García-Sastre, bearded and long-haired, looks more like a rock musician, and in fact has several shelves of music cassettes – everything from Bach to Meat Loaf – stacked inside his desk. The Spanish-born Dr. García-Sastre is also an amateur entomologist with an extensive insect collection, while Dr. Palese, a native of Austria, cheerfully admits to having “very few” interests outside of medicine. Read more [...]

New Hope for Millions of Men

Every year, across the United States, millions of men go into their doctors’ offices for a blood screening – the Prostate-Specific Antigen (PSA) test – to see if they are at risk for prostate cancer. The need for the test is clear: prostate cancer is the tenth-leading cause of cancer death in the U.S.; close to 200,000 men each year are found to have the disease, and more than 27,000 will die from it. One man in six will get prostate cancer during his lifetime, and for one man in 35 it will be fatal. Read more [...]

Windows into the Heart: The New Frontier of Coronary Disease Research

When asked about the impact of cardiovascular disease on world health, Jagat Narula, MD, PhD replies calmly but bluntly: “It is the most important scourge against mankind – the same for developing countries as for developed countries, and the same for men as for women.” Read more [...]

The Quiet Revolutionary

In 2007, Ihor Lemischka, Ph.D. was a professor of molecular biology at Princeton University, where he had worked for more than two decades. His research in stem cell biology and its possible medical uses had brought him international renown. Read more [...]