Dr. Robert E. Schwartz
Dr. Robert Schwartz, Associate Professor of Medicine, Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology, WDOM, is a co-senior author on a pivotal paper published in Nature that reports on a new technique for detailed mapping of lung pathology in COVID-19.
In a collaborative study at Weill Cornell Medicine and NewYork-Presbyterian, investigators have implemented advanced technology and analytics to map, at single-cell resolution, the cellular landscape of diseased lung tissue in severe COVID-19 and other infectious lung diseases. Their critical findings have helped to illuminate the causes of damage in these lung illnesses and include a rich data resource for further research.
The study’s team of researchers emphasized that the technique not only will be applicable to a broad set of other diseases, for which tissue can be obtained, but also should give doctors and scientists a practical method for delineating important differences within disease categories.
“Traditionally for lung, liver, and other organ diseases we have these broad diagnoses that in fact cover multiple distinct diseases—now we have a tool that that will enable us routinely to distinguish among these different diseases, and hopefully make use of those distinctions in treating patients more effectively,” said Dr. Schwartz. “I think this has the potential to revolutionize medicine.”