Weill Cornell Medical College today broke ground on its new Ambulatory Care and Medical Education Building, the 106-year-old institution's first clinical facility. The centerpiece of Weill Cornell's capital campaign, Advancing the Clinical Mission, the 13-story,$230-million medical complex will serve as the new focus for patient care and education at the Medical College's campus, as well as the flagship building for Cornell University in New York City.

For men who suffer from enlargement of the prostate, also called benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH), combining two classes of drugs reduces the risk of significant worsening of symptoms and other BPH complications by 66 percent, according to a multi-center study authored by a physician-scientist at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University Medical Center. The study results, published in the December 18 New England Journal of Medicine, may affect treatment for men with BPH including half of all men 60 and older in the United States.

The small number of men who remain with their female partner and undergo microsurgical vasectomy reversal --performed because of the death of a child or a change of heart -- achieve a much higher natural pregnancy and live-birth rate than the overall group of men who undergo vasectomy reversal -- most commonly due to divorce and remarriage. The reasons for this discrepancy, identified in a new study by physician-scientists at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center, are not yet fully understood.

Abnormally low blood sugar may raise an infant's risk for brain damage during delivery, according to a new study led by a NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center researcher. He believes early testing for neonatal hypoglycemia might potentially reduce neurologic morbidity.

In a significant scientific achievement, physicians and scientists at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center have successfully employed preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) for retinoblastoma. The result was the world's first babies genetically predisposed to this disease to be born free of the deadly eye cancer. The news appears in this month's issue of the American Journal of Ophthalmology.

For the first time, scientists have shown how the activity of a gene associated with normal human development, as well as the occurrence of cancer and several other diseases, is repressed epigenetically by modifying not the DNA code of a gene, but instead the spool-like histone proteins around which DNA tightly wraps itself in the nucleus of cells in the body.

Researchers at Weill Cornell Medical College believe they've uncovered a molecular switch that naturally suppresses the body's immune response in situations where it's not needed. Drugs that mimic or oppose this mechanism might someday fight autoimmune disorders like lupus or rheumatoid arthritis, or protect immune cells from enemies like HIV.

A new $14.5 million emergency department facility opened today at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/The Allen Pavilion to serve the medical needs of upper Manhattan and Bronx residents. Funded through a combination of federal, state, city, and private money, the new emergency department is designed to improve the quality, efficiency, and comfort of patient care.