April 2019 – Cornell Center for Enervating NeuroImmune Disease

Exertion intolerance: What is the evidence telling us?

Clinical core co-director Dr. Betsy Keller presented on the second day of the NIH Accelerating Research on ME/CFS meeting. Dr. Keller outlined exertion intolerance in ME/CFS drawing upon her years of experience in the field. Her talk includes some preliminary data being generated from our NIH-funded Center. Dr. Keller’s complete talk can be viewed below.

Cellular Metabolism of Immune Cells

At the NIH Accelerating Research on ME/CFS meeting, Alexandra Mandarano, a Ph.D. candidate in Dr. Hanson’s lab, presented “Cellular Metabolism of Immune Cells”. The talk outlines a study that was performed in collaboration with Simmaron Research and focused on immunometabolism in people with ME/CFS as well as in healthy controls. To elaborate further, Alexandra Mandarano with the help of Jessica Maya, a graduate student in Dr. Hanson’s lab, performed Seahorse bioenergetics assays along with other experiments to better understand the metabolic fitness of immune cells from this population. Please see the video below to watch the full talk.

Mitochondrial DNA mutation and disease

Center member Zhenglong Gu, PhD, presented on mitochondrial DNA mutation and disease at Cornell University on April 19, 2019. Dr. Gu is participating in the ENID Center to examine the role of mitochondrial genomes in ME/CFS.

“Next Steps for ME/CFS Research”

Dr. Maureen Hanson spoke on the “Next Steps for ME/CFS Research” panel at the NIH meeting “Accelerating Research on ME/CFS” on April 5, 2019. The text of her statement and some by Dr. Jose Montoya on the same panel can be found here. A transcript of the prior remarks at the meeting by Dr. Francis Collins is available here.