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    The Einstein-Mount Sinai Diabetes Research Center presents:

    The Norman Fleischer

    NYC Regional Diabetes Symposium

    May 3, 2024

     

    Bringing together researchers to discuss the latest diabetes science

     

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    About the Symposium

    The 2024 Norman Fleischer NYC Diabetes Symposium will be held on May 3, 2024 at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in NY.

    The primary aim of the Norman Fleischer NYC Diabetes Symposium is to provide a forum that promotes professional interaction and facilitates collaboration across institutions in the New York City Metropolitan Area.

    The Symposium also aims to foster increased awareness of research and to promote multi-site collaborative projects across the many regional institutions. An emphasis is placed on enabling junior faculty, postdoctoral fellows, fellows and doctoral students to interact with each other as well as with senior faculty and professionals.

    The Symposium will, create opportunities for researchers to present their work and enhance career opportunities for junior investigators.

    We encourage scientists, clinicians, and other professionals working on diabetes and related traits in academic or other settings to attend the Symposium.

     

    Learn more about the Fleischer Institute for Diabetes and Metabolism and Dr. Norman Fleischer, M.D.

    Online registration is Closed

    Onsite registration will be available (no lunch provided)

    Abstract Submission is CLOSED

    Symposium registrants are encouraged to submit a scientific abstract. Abstracts may be original or proposed research topics from the following categories:

     

    • Metabolism, signaling and Integrative Physiology
    • Diabetes technology
    • Clinical - therapies, trials, interventions, care or education
    • Genetics/Epigenetics, Lifestyle and the environment
    • Diabetes-associated diseases
    • Pathogenesis, epidemiology or etiology

     

    A committee, comprising scholars from participating Institutions, will review submitted abstracts.

     

    - The top 5 abstracts will be awarded short oral presentations -

    All remaining abstracts will be eligible for poster presentations

     

    "Best Poster Awards" certificates and Amazon gift cards will be presented to the eligible top three scoring posters (1st $300, 2nd $200 and 3rd $100)

    Download the 2024 Agenda and Abstract Book

  • Speakers

    HAROLD RIFKIN LECTURE

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    Kevan Herold, M.D.

    C.N.H. Long Professor of Immunobiology and of Medicine (Endocrinology), Yale School of Medicine

    Dr. Herold's background and research are in translational immunology. He is interested in understanding the basis for autoimmune diseases and developing new therapies based on an understanding of disease mechanisms. Dr. Herlod's focus has largely been in the field of autoimmune Type 1 diabetes. The work encompasses basic laboratory work as well as clinical studies to understand the regulation of autoreactive T cells to clinical trials that involve novel therapeutics with a focus on identifying the immune cells responsible for attacking the pancreatic islets, as well as studying how beta cells respond to these attacks.

     

    As part of these studies the Herold Lab  has been very interested in analysis of beta cell function in Type 1 diabetes and identifying the cellular mechanisms that can protect them from immune killing. His group has also been studying the development of autoimmune diabetes in patients with cancers who are treated with checkpoint inhibitors. Dr. Herold's clinical and basic studies are focused on understanding how beta cells are destroyed and react to inflammation, with the ultimate goal being to stop disease before it progresses to permanent organ damage.

     

    INVITED SPEAKERS

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    Romina Bevacqua, Ph.D.

    Assistant Professor, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai

    Since January 2023, Dr Bevacqua has been a new Assistant Professor in the Department of Medicine, Division of Endocrinology, Diabetes and Bone Disease, and member of the Diabetes, Obesity and Metabolism Institute (DOMI) and the Regenerative Biology and Stem Cell Institute, at Mount Sinai, where she was selected as a Biomedical Laureate. Previously, Dr. Bevacqua was an Instructor (2020-2021) and a post-doctoral fellow (2017-2020) in the laboratory of Professor Seung Kim, Department of Developmental Biology, at the Stanford University School of Medicine. Previously, her graduate studies where completed in Buenos Aires University, Argentina.

    The Bevacqua Lab focuses on understanding the regulatory mechanisms governing pancreatic islet cell function and maturation, and integrates modern genetic, cell and developmental biology, biochemical and physiological approaches. In particular, Dr. Bevacqua development of genetic systems -including CRISPR/Cas9- in primary human islet organoids, termed “pseudoislets”, provides unprecedented methods to investigate mechanisms regulating function of mature human islets. Using these novel systems, the lab is interested in understanding how transcriptional regulators, non-coding regulatory elements, epigenetic and external signals orchestrate crucial steps in human islet functional maturation and proliferation, and how these steps are mis-regulated in human diseases, particularly type 1 (T1D) and type 2 diabetes (T2D).

     

    The goal of the Lab is to advance and deepen the fundamental understanding of islet regulation and function, and their connection to complex traits associated with diseases, particularly T1D and T2D, knowledge that should inform islet replacement and regeneration therapies. For more info, please refer to Bevacqua Lab 

     

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    Ankit Shah, M.D.

    Assistant Professor of Medicine, Division of Endocrinology, Metabolism and Nutrition, Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School

    Dr. Ankit Shah received his undergraduate and medicaldegrees from Rutgers University. He completed his internal medicine and endocrinology training at Columbia University. He is currently a clinical and translational investigator at Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School and uses stable isotope methodologies to better understand substrate utilization in hepatic gluconeogenesis.

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

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    Liora Katz, Ph.D.

    Associate Professor, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai

    Dr. Liora S. Katz is an Associate Professor at the Diabetes Obesity and Metabolism Institute, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York. Her academic journey spans over two decades, focusing diabetes and obesity research. Dr. Katz earned her B.Sc. in Biology from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, her M.Sc. in Structural and Molecular Biochemistry from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and her Ph.D. in Biology from Geneva University, Switzerland. She further honed her expertise through a Post-Doctoral Fellowship at the National Institutes of Health (NIH/NIDDK). Driven by a passion for science, she has contributed significantly to the understanding of various aspects of diabetes, ranging from transcriptional regulation and cell differentiation to the identification of key molecular pathways involved in β-cell function and survival. Currently, her main research focus is glucose-induced adaptive expansion and the intricate mechanisms governing beta cell failure amid metabolic overload.

     

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    Rebuma Firdessa Fite, DVM, Ph.D.

    Assistant Professor, Department of Medicine and Microbiology & Immunology, Albert Einstein College of Medicine

    Dr. Fite obtained his PhD degree in nanomedicine and immunology from University of Würzburg, Germany in 2015. Then, he joined Columbia University in June 2016 for his postdoctoral training and was later promoted to Associate Research Scientist. At Columbia, he led several research projects on antigen-specific immunotherapy (ASIT) of autoimmune diabetes, immune tolerance, and nanomedicine. He developed and proved the efficacy of two nanoscale therapeutics that are easily adaptable as a platform technology for a variety of human diseases. He also established a method to selectively target certain cell types and reprogram them in vivo for epitope-based precision immunotherapy. His findings support the possibility of applying a precision medicine using customized multiple epitopes (peptides) and nanoscale delivery technology for the treatment of autoimmune diabetes.

    Dr. Fite is interested to conduct translational research in immunology and nanomedicine. Particularly, he is keen to understand how the nature/chemistry of the β cell-derived antigens, their way of delivery to antigen-presenting cells and the local microenvironment dictates the fate of autoreactive T cells. The goal is to understand key parameters that determine the type of antigen-specific immune responses triggered by a given self-antigen(s), a critical feature required to design effective precision immunotherapy. Dr. Fite's research interest extends to establishing a human immune system mouse models that recapitulate the pathophysiology of autoimmune diabetes in humans to test novel ASITs and better understand the disease mechanisms.

     

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    Farnaz Shamsi, Ph.D.

    Assistant Professor, Department of Molecular Pathobiology, New York University; Departments of Cell Biology and Medicine, NYU Grossman School of Medicine

    Dr. Farnaz Shamsi is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Molecular Pathobiology at New York University and the Departments of Cell Biology and Medicine at NYU School of Medicine. She received her Ph.D. in Developmental Biology from the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry in Germany, followed by postdoctoral training at the Joslin Diabetes Center, Harvard Medical School. Dr. Shamsi’s laboratory focuses on investigating the
    development of thermogenic adipose tissue and its impact on energy balance and metabolism. Their research efforts have received recognition and support from the American Diabetes Association, the National Institute of Health, and the Mathers Foundation. For more information, please visit Dr. Shamsi's Lab.

     

     

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    Eunhee Choi, Ph.D.

    Assistant Professor, Department of Pathology and Cell Biology, Columbia University

    Dr. Eunhee Choi completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the UT Southwestern Medical Center under the supervision of Dr. Hongtao Yu. She worked on the function of cell division regulators and discovered an unexpected connection between cell division regulators and insulin signaling. Now she is an assistant professor in Columbia University, where her research focuses on the function, regulation, and mechanism of insulin receptor signaling. Recently her team discovered that insulin and insulin mimetics activate insulin receptor in different ways, providing insights into the development of new strategies for the treatment of insulin resistance.

     

     

     

     

     

     

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    Lu Hu, Ph.D.

    Assistant Professor of Population Health, Institute for Excellence in Health Equity, NYU Langone Health

    Dr. Lu Hu is a behavioral scientist and an Assistant Professor in the
    Center for Healthful Behavior Change, Department of Population Health at NYU Langone Health. She is also a core faculty member at the Institute for Excellence in Health Equity at NYU Langone Health. Her research primarily focuses on developing and testing innovative, sustainable, and scalable technology-based interventions to increase access to care and reduce health disparities in underserved populations with diabetes and prediabetes. She is currently leading several NIH and foundation-funded projects focusing on examining the implementation of multi-level mHealth-based interventions to deliver culturally tailored interventions for underserved communities with diabetes and prediabetes. Dr. Hu’s work has been recognized by multiple awards, including a 2022 American Diabetes Association (ADA) Early Career Abstract Award, a 2021 ADA Young Investigator Award, and a 2021 ADA Diabetes Education Abstract Award.

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    Preeti Viswanathan, M.D.

    Assistant Professor of Pediatrics, Division of Pediatric Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Nutrition, Children's Hospital at Montefiore

    Dr.Preeti Viswanathan is an Assistant Professor of Pediatrics in the division of Pediatric Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Nutrition at the Children’s Hospital at Montefiore. She completed medical school at the Kempegowda Institute of Medical Sciences in Bangalore India, her Pediatrics Residency at the Niklaus Children’s Hospital in Miami and her Pediatric Gastroenterology fellowship at the Children’s Hospital at Montefiore. Her previous researchhas included identification of mechanisms in acute and chronic hepatocellular injury to understand what pathways maybe targeted for therapy. Pediatric MASLD, which is now the most common chronic liver disease of childhood is now her central focus as a clinician and researcher. Oxidative stress and inflammation are shared in pediatric and adult disease, however, a unique aspect to be considered in children is that the liver is still growing. As the period of active liver growth in children relies heavily in genomic integrity, she is trying to understand how mechanistic processes that oversee the maintenance of genomic and mitochondrial integrity in this setting of ongoing liver growth could impact outcomes.

  • Participating Institutions

    Fostering collaborations across regional institutions

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    Albert Einstein College of Medicine

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    - Hosting Institution -

    Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai

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    Columbia University Irving Medical Center

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    NYU Grossman School of Medicine

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    Weill Cornell Medicine

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    New York Medical College

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    The Rockefeller University

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    Rutgers New Jersey Medical School

  • Support

    The Symposium is made possible thanks to generous support from:

    The Fleischer Family

    The Fleischer Family

    Symposium activities have been sponsored in part by a gift from the Fleischer family.
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    The Fleischer Institute for Diabetes & Metabolism

    The Fleischer Institute for Diabetes & Metabolism

    The Fleischer Institute for Diabetes and Metabolism at Montefiore Einstein serves as the home for cutting-edge research (basic, translational, clinical) and clinical care for patients with diabetes, obesity and related conditions. Named after Dr. Norman Fleischer in honor of his pioneering research and contributions to the field of diabetes, the Fleischer Institute builds on the strong foundation he established during his 46-year career at Einstein.
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    The Einstein-Mount Sinai Diabetes Research Center

    The Einstein-Mount Sinai Diabetes Research Center

    The Einstein-Mount Sinai Diabetes Research Center (ES-DRC) comprises a vibrant, extensive, diverse, well-funded and highly productive program that provides the foundation for high-quality and cutting-edge research in diabetes and related studies in obesity, metabolism and endocrinology.
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