In multiple myeloma, plasma cells in the blood become malignant and attack the bone, causing painful fractures and, often, death. Nearly 14,000 Americans are diagnosed each year with the disease, and over 11,000 die. Multiple myeloma accounts for approximately 10% of cancers of the blood.

The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has pledged a $500,000 challenge grant over the next three years to help create a $1 million endowment for the Gateways to the Laboratory Program, a joint endeavor of Weill Cornell Medical College, The Rockefeller University, and Sloan-Kettering Institute.

Health care reform has made important progress in ensuring that America's 70 million children have health care coverage with benefits that meet their unique health care needs. Families of pediatric patients from America's children's hospitals understand that access to timely, high-quality medical care can save lives. That's why two patients from NewYork-Presbyterian/Phyllis and David Komansky Center for Children's Health and NewYork-Presbyterian/Morgan Stanley Children's Hospital and their families have traveled to Washington, D.C., to discuss their personal health care stories with lawmakers who are carefully monitoring how health reform implementation rolls out.

Researchers at Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center report that women who delay childbearing increase their likelihood that their male babies will have hypospadias, a congenital anomaly that occurs when the penile urethra develops abnormally, leaving the urethral opening on the bottom side of the penis.

Fibroids -- noncancerous growths in the uterus -- are very common, occurring in as many as 40 percent of women as they approach menopause. The discomfort, pain, and bleeding they cause have led many women to have a hysterectomy -- removal of the uterus. Excluding cancer, however, hysterectomy is usually unnecessary, and there is a tremendous need for educating women and their doctors about fibroids and the alternative, less invasive ways of treating this condition.

One of the marvels of life is how the nervous systems of organisms can operate so rapidly and precisely, governing motion and consciousness. Nerve cells, like other cells, have membranes spanned by potassium-conducting channel proteins, but exactly how do these channel proteins work? Now, several papers in the November 1 issue of Nature, including one by Benoît Roux and Simon Bernèche of Weill Cornell Medical College, answer this question in dazzling detail, greatly deepening our understanding of some of the basic phenomena of the living world.

NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University Medical Center today announced the opening of The Carmen and John Thain Center for Prenatal Pediatrics. The new unit will provide high-risk pregnant women and their babies the most comprehensive care currently available, all in one location.

The Board of Overseers of Weill Cornell Medical College in New York City voted today to establish the new Ansary Center for Stem Cell Therapeutics. The unique Center will bring together a premier team of scientists to focus on stem cells the primitive, unspecialized cells thought to have an unrivaled capacity to form all types of cells in the body.