New York, NY (May 20, 2002) Investigators from Weill Medical College of Cornell University today reported encouraging interim results with a new potential therapy for non-Hodgkinâs lymphoma (NHL), which affects about 53,900 new patients each year in the United States. The presentation was made at the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) in Orlando, FL.Dr. John P. Leonard, the lead investigator of a trial involving a collaboration of scientists from Weill Cornell, Amgen (of Thousand Oaks, CA), and Immunomedics (of Morris Plains, NJ), reported data from 21 patients who have relapsed and refractory NHLpatients in whom the disease has progressed despite prior treatment. The study is the first trial of a combination of two monoclonal antibodies in lymphomaone of the antibodies a known agent (rituximab) and the other a new one (epratuzumab). Administered together, once weekly for four weeks, the combination has preliminarily shown enhanced efficacy over that which has been previously reported with rituximab alone. Rituximab acts against the CD20 antigen (or target molecule) on NHL cells. Its brand name is Rituxan¨, and it is produced by IDEC, of San Diego, Calif., and Genentech, of San Francisco. Epratuzumab, a new investigational antibody in development by Amgen and Immunomedics, acts against the CD22 antigen of NHL.
Cornell University will honor 35 secondary school teachers from as near as Horseheads, N.Y., and from as far away as Singapore, May 21 and 22. The teachers were selected by Cornell's Merrill Presidential Scholars, students who represent the top 1 percent of the university's graduating seniors.
Can not-for-profit universities with boards of trustees learn from corporate boards of directors? Are universities essentially unmanageable places, or are there workable strategies for running them well? And should a university fight or welcome a unionized faculty and staff? These and other pressing issues in higher education will be discussed during "Governance of Higher Education Institutions and Systems," the Cornell Higher Education Research Institute (CHERI) annual conference on Cornell University's campus June 4 and 5. (May 16, 2002)
Technology Review, a magazine published by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has named Kelvin H. Lee, assistant professor in the School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at Cornell, among the "World's Top 100 Young Innovators in Technology and Business".
ITHACA, N.Y. --The Cornell University administration was informed May 14, 2002, that a group of graduate students, called the Cornell Association of Student Employees/United Auto Workers (CASE/UAW), has filed a petition with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) seeking to be recognized as a collective bargaining agent on behalf of Cornell graduate research assistants, teaching assistants, research assistants, graduate assistants, readers, graders, tutors and consultants. The Cornell administration views this action with serious concern. On the one hand, the university has a long history of participation in both the American and international labor movements. On our own campus, the administration presently bargains with six different bargaining units. These negotiations have always been conducted in good faith by both the university and its represented workers. (May 15, 2002)
Boyce D. McDaniel, the Cornell University physicist and Manhattan Project scientist who gave the atomic bomb its final check before the first test at Trinity site in July 1945, died of a heart attack May 8 in Ithaca, N.Y. He was 84. McDaniel's faculty career at Cornell spanned 56 years. But his professional start was sudden and dramatic. In 1943, as a newly fledged Ph.D., McDaniel was hired, at $250 a month working 10- to 15-hour days at a secret facility in Los Alamos, N.M., to conduct nuclear physics research on a device nicknamed "the gadget." The device was the atomic bomb, and McDaniel had been hired as a protégé of Robert Bacher, one of several Cornell physicists assigned to the Manhattan Project. The young McDaniel would play a critical role on physicist Robert Wilson's cyclotron research team, which helped identify the amount of the isotope uranium-235 (U-235) needed to create the atomic fission to detonate the world's first nuclear weapon. (May 15, 2002)
Gary Stewart, opinion and senior editor at The Ithaca Journal, has been appointed assistant director of community relations at Cornell University, announced Director of Community Relations John Gutenberger, May 14. Stewart will assume his new position July 1. (May 15, 2002)
Do humans help create risks of deer-car collisions, encounters with black bears and attacks from mountain lions? Following the record number of such hazardous interactions in recent years, wildlife managers, extension educators and community leaders across North America are struggling to meet the challenge of humans and wild animals living together in harmony. Now, for the first time, the many aspects of this relationship have been folded into a new textbook: Human Dimensions of Wildlife Management in North America, by Daniel J. Decker, Cornell professor of natural resources; Tommy L. Brown, leader of Cornell's Human Dimensions Research Unit in natural resources; and William F. Siemer, researcher in natural resources. (May 10, 2002)
What constitutes a family? How should children be raised and educated? Who is allowed to marry, and what are permissible grounds for divorce? A new Cornell Law School project grapples daily with thorny questions on gender, sexuality, family and the law.
An idea that may lead to more-accurate mammogram readings -- and fewer breast cancer deaths -- took first place, and an award of $10,000, in a Cornell University contest for the best business idea. Now in its second year, the annual Business Idea Competition is sponsored by the Big Red Venture Fund at Cornell's Johnson Graduate School of Management. The contest is open to any team with a business idea and at least one member with a Cornell affiliation -- students, alumni, faculty or staff. The winners were announced at a special awards ceremony on campus Friday, April 26. (May 10, 2002)
Cornell University has launched the largest single scientific effort in its history: the New Life Sciences Initiative, a campuswide program that will forever change the way life-science research is conducted and taught at the university. Involving investments of up to $500 million, the initiative will require the largest fund-raising campaign for a single project ever attempted by Cornell. Announcing the new initiative, Cornell President Hunter Rawlings said the effort will engage "the most broadly respected faculty in the country" in what he predicted will be "great research, great teaching and great outreach" in all aspects of the life sciences. Key to the huge program of discovery and education is the integration of life sciences with physical, engineering and computational sciences. (May 8, 2002)
