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Albert Einstein College of Medicine

Albert Einstein College of Medicine

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Albert Einstein College of Medicine

The Albert Einstein College of Medicine (Einstein) of Yeshiva University is a premier, research-intensive medical school, located at the Jack and Pearl Resnick Campus in the Morris Park neighborhood of the Bronx, New York City. Einstein also offers graduate biomedical degrees through the Sue Golding Graduate Division and is home to more than 2,000 full-time faculty members located at its Jack and Pearl Resnick Campus and its clinical affiliates. Einstein is committed to pursuing innovative biomedical investigation and to the development of ethical and compassionate physicians and scientists.

Einstein has long been a national leader in biomedical research support from the federal government. In 2013, Einstein faculty received more than $155 million in funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Additionally, the NIH funds major research centers at Einstein in stem cells, diabetes, cancer, liver disease, and acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS). Other areas of focus include developmental brain research, neuroscience, cardiac disease, and initiatives to reduce and eliminate ethnic and racial health disparities. Einstein is also the only New York City institution selected to participate in the federal government’s landmark Women’s Health Initiative, and is currently one of only four sites nationwide taking part in a large-scale study of the health status of the Hispanic/Latino community in the Bronx, also supported by the NIH.

Einstein’s partnership with Montefiore Medical Center, its University Hospital and academic medical center, includes four jointly run Centers of Excellence and is further strengthened by the dual appointments of faculty and physicians across both institutions—enhancing collaborative research, teaching, and patient care. This partnership allows for an increasing focus on bench-to-bedside research, through which discoveries in Einstein’s laboratories lead to therapies and treatments for patients on an accelerated timetable. Through its affiliations with Montefiore; Jacobi Medical Center, its founding hospital; and five other hospital systems in the Bronx, Manhattan, Long Island, and Brooklyn, the College of Medicine runs one of the largest residency and fellowship training programs in the medical and dental professions in the United States. In addition to Montefiore and Jacobi, Einstein medical students rotate through clinical clerkships at Bronx-Lebanon Hospital and St. Barnabas Hospital in the Bronx, Lennox Hill Hospital in Manhattan, North Shore–LIJ Health System on Long Island, and Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn. The broad geographical reach of Einstein’s residency programs is unique among New York City medical schools.

Einstein also offers one of the nation’s largest programs for medical, graduate, and postdoctoral education. During the 2013 to 2014 academic year, the College of Medicine was home to 734 MD students, 236 PhD students, 106 students in the combined MD/PhD program, and 353 postdoctoral research fellows at the Belfer Institute for Advanced Biomedical Studies. The more than 8,000 Einstein alumni are among the nation’s foremost clinicians, biomedical scientists, and medical educators. The medical school opened its doors in 1955, and Einstein was one of the first major medical schools to integrate bedside experience into early medical education, bringing first-year students in contact with patients and linking classroom study to case experience. Einstein also led the way in the development of bioethics as an accepted academic discipline in medical school curricula, was the first private medical school in New York City to establish an academic department of family medicine, and was the first to create a residency program in internal medicine with an emphasis on women’s health.

Combination of two brain diagrams in one for comparison: in the left, normal brain, in the right, brain of a person with Alzheimer’s disease. In the Alzheimer’s brain the cortex shrivels up, damaging areas involved in thinking, planning, and remembering. Shrinkage is severe in the hippocampus, an area of the cortex that plays a key role in the formation of new memories. Ventricles (fluid-filled spaces within the brain) grow larger. The Albert Einstein College of Medicine receives national funding for brain research. (Wikimedia Commons)

Einstein has embarked on a major expansion program that effectively has doubled the size of its campus. Central to this expansion, and a critical part of Einstein’s campus master plan, was the June 2008 opening of the Michael F. Price Center for Genetic and Translational Medicine/Harold and Muriel Block Research Pavilion, a 223,000 square-foot biomedical research building that houses 40 laboratories. These new state-of-the-art facilities bring together world-class scientists and advanced, cutting-edge technology to facilitate the “translation” of discoveries at the molecular level to the actual treatment, cure, and prevention of disease.

The College of Medicine has recently fostered a strong and growing team of stem cell investigators with particular expertise in hematopoietic, cancer and liver stem cell biology, and liver transplantation. In 2007, Einstein’s strategic research plan called for the creation of an institute that would bring Einstein to the forefront of stem cell and regenerative medicine research. In the subsequent five years, Einstein established the Ruth L. and David S. Gottesman Institute for Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine, following a large philanthropic gift from the Gottesman family to provide individual investigators and multidisciplinary teams with the resources needed to realize the promise of this emerging field. The institute is led by its director and chair, Paul S. Frenette, MD—a leading stem cell and vascular biology researcher—and is recognized for a number of significant research contributions pertaining to bone marrow biology, liver-directed therapies, neuronal stem cells in the brain, techniques for generating blood cells, and stem cell–based treatments for diabetes. The institute draws on the work of more than 25 Einstein faculty members whose research encompasses six themes: embryonic stem cell differentiation and modeling; hematopoietic and cancer stem cells; neuroscience; model organisms of stem cell biology; cardiovascular progenitors; and liver regeneration.

The institute’s mission is (1) to advance the scientific knowledge in stem cell biology and breakthroughs in regenerative medicine through faculty interactions, research support, and education; (2) to foster collaborations and innovations by bridging scientific fields and overcome natural departmental barriers; (3) to translate basic science discoveries into novel stem cell–based therapies that impact clinical care.

The Stem Cell Institute is housed on the first floor of the Price Center and in renovated space across four other research buildings, with the goal of establishing an institute that would set the standard in stem cell research and regenerative medicine, nationally and internationally. In addition to its generous endowment, the Institute for Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine at Einstein is supported by external sources, including the NIH and the NYSTEM. Created in 2007, NYSTEM has provided substantial funding for stem cell research over the decade since its founding. Notably, Einstein is among the highest-ranked institutions in New York competing for state support and, to date, has received more stem cell funding from NYSTEM than any other institution.

Funding from NYSTEM supports the creation of the Einstein Comprehensive Pluripotent Stem Cell Center, which consists of three units: the Human Pluripotent Stem Cell Unit, the Cell-Sorting and Xenotransplantation Unit, and the Stem Cell Genomic Unit. Stem cell research at Einstein also benefits from the College of Medicine’s long-standing commitment to research with model organisms, including C. elegans, Drosophila, zebrafish, and mice.

Keisuke Ito

Albert Einstein College of Medicine

See Also: Adult Stem Cells: Overview; Blood Adult Stem Cell: Current Research on Isolation or Production of Therapeutic Cells; Embryonic Stem Cells, Methods to Produce.

Further Readings

Albert Einstein College of Medicine. http://www.aecom.yu.edu (Accessed January 2014).

Eltayeb, Emil. Albert Einstein and Diseases. New York: Xlibris Corporation, 2008.

Stem Cell Institute. http://www.einstein.yu.edu/centers/stem-cell/research (Accessed January 2014).