The Rockefeller University

10/26/2026

When Rockefeller’s Albert Claude, George Palade, and Christian de Duve were awarded the 1974 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their discoveries on the structural and functional organization of the cell, the presenter remarked that the work was not only remarkable but also essentially created the new field of cell biology.

The first breakthrough for this trio of Rockefeller scientists came in 1930, when Claude devised a technique called cell fractionation to separate the functional parts of a cell, allowing for clearer examination with electron microscopes. Despite that progress, the view of the cell interior remained frustratingly unclear, “as distant from us as the stars and galaxies,” Claude said. That changed 15 years later when Claude and fellow Rockefeller scientist Keith Porter published the first electron micrograph of a whole cell, revealing its astonishingly intricate inner structure.

“We have entered the cell, the mansion of our birth, and started the inventory of our acquired wealth,” Claude later recalled of this achievement.

In the 1950s, Palade, a graduate student in Claude’s lab, and de Duve, a fellow lab head, independently perfected Claude’s techniques to make fundamental discoveries using electron microscopy. They went on to create the first functional map of the cell and over the years revealed its microcosm of organelles, including mitochondria (power centers of the cell), lysosomes (the cell’s clean-up crew), vacuoles (which sequester harmful elements), the endoplasmic reticulum and the ribosomes it produces, as well as many smaller cellular subcomponents.

De Duve would apply his knowledge of lysosomes to diseases and therapeutics, including atherosclerosis, cancer, immune defense mechanisms, genetic diseases, parasitic diseases, arthritis, and chemotherapy.

By the early 1970s, Rockefeller's role as the crucible of cell biology had been firmly established; as Palade noted, “there were at least five other laboratories working in different sectors of cell biology.”

That legacy continues today among Rockefeller researchers, from the development of single-cell sequencing techniques by Junyue Cao to the structural analysis of ribosomes by Sebastian Klinge.

10/23/2026

Living in a different country is always an adjustment. That’s why the campus group Rockefeller Initiative for Global Scholars (RIGS) works to help international scholars, from students to faculty, not only settle into life in the U.S. but thrive in it.

This month’s meetup, which features faculty guest Steve Bonilla, is part of the group’s larger programming that also includes workshops and events.

10/22/2026

This week, Catherine Dulac of Harvard University received the 2026 Pearl Meister Greengard Prize, the preeminent international award recognizing outstanding women scientists.

She was presented with the award by Paula Zahn, a ten-time Emmy Award-winning journalist, television anchor, and executive producer.

Dulac's research has revealed the neural circuits underlying instinctive behaviors such as mating, parenting, and aggression and transformed scientific understanding of their biological roots.

Dulac’s lab has also uncovered clusters of neurons in the hypothalamus that drive classic sickness behaviors such as seeking warmth and loss of appetite. In addition, her lab discovered two opposing neuron populations connected to loneliness. One fires during isolation to signal the need for company; the other after socializing to signal the need has been met.

She is currently probing why bacterial and parasitic infections trigger opposite social responses in animals—avoidance versus hypersociality—and searching for the neural mechanisms behind the difference.

Congratulations! 👩‍🔬 🎉

10/21/2026

Don't miss this piece in Nature on Paul Cohen's latest work, a massive study of more than 100,000 people that found a surprising connection between ‘good’ body fat and improved mental health.

Cohen's team used an artificial-intelligence model to quantify, from scans, the study participants’ active brown fat, which is fat that is ‘turned on’ and burning calories. They concluded that the more active brown fat people have, the greater the protection they have from disorders and diseases.

“The dream is that we can use these kinds of data as a platform for not only learning new biology, but maybe repurposing already-approved drugs to activate brown fat in humans and leverage the benefits that come from that,” Cohen says.

Massive study of more than 100,000 people finds surprising connection between ‘good’ body fat and improved mental health.

10/20/2026

What started as a question about how bacteria protect themselves from viruses became one of the most powerful tools in modern biology.

Rockefeller University scientist Luciano Marraffini has spent nearly two decades investigating CRISPR-Cas systems, the bacterial immune mechanisms that recognize and destroy invading genetic material. His research helped establish that CRISPR systems can target DNA directly as well predicted how its molecular machinery could be harnessed as a programmable tool for genome editing.

Today, CRISPR-based technologies are transforming biomedical research and opening new possibilities for treating genetic disease. But the story began with fundamental questions about how bacteria defend themselves against viruses, a reminder that breakthroughs often emerge from curiosity-driven research.

On World CRISPR Day, we're celebrating the science that helped turn a bacterial defense mechanism into a life-saving technology.

10/19/2026

In Nature Reviews Genetics, Rockefeller's Titia de Lange and colleagues highlight new insights into how telomere attrition guards against cancer, including its role in limiting cell proliferation, the importance of telomere length at birth for lifelong cancer prevention, the mechanisms governing telomere length regulation and how telomerase activation enables malignant cells to bypass this barrier.

In contrast to the popular perception that telomere shortening is harmful, findings demonstrate that normal telomere attrition limits the risk of cancer and suggest that counteracting telomere attrition in healthy individuals (for example, by activating telomerase) could enable tumor outgrowth.

New data also further underscore the promise of telomerase inhibition as a broadly effective cancer therapy.

In this Review, the authors discuss recent data showing that telomere attrition is a powerful tumour-suppressor mechanism that limits the development of a wide variety of human cancers.

10/16/2026

Spotted on campus this week: the fastest animal in the world, a peregrine falcon! 🪶

Did you know that New York City is home to one of the largest urban populations of peregrine falcons?

Thanks to Alex Kogan for this superb photo!

10/15/2026

By the 1950s, scientists knew that antibodies were responsible for recognizing and neutralizing foreign invaders, but understood little about how they actually worked. Enormous, irregular molecules, antibodies were notoriously difficult to analyze. Amidst this confusion, Gerald Edelman set out to uncover their chemical structures.

Edelman arrived at The Rockefeller University in 1957, after serving as a physician in the U.S. Army Medical Corps in Paris, where he became fascinated by how little was known about immunity. In his Rockefeller lab, Edelman approached antibodies using the tools of chemistry and physics rather than classical biology, and reasoned that antibodies might consist of multiple linked protein chains. Following this theory, he used chemical agents to break the molecule apart at its disulfide bonds, proving that antibodies were built from separate heavy and light amino acid chains rather than a single giant protein, helping to reveal the molecule's now-famous Y-shaped structure.

Over years of painstaking work at Rockefeller, Edelman went on to map the complete amino acid sequence of an entire antibody molecule—the largest protein ever fully sequenced at that time. His findings showed that an antibody's ability to recognize a target was determined by its internal chemical structure, providing crucial evidence for the modern understanding of how immunity works and helping lay the scientific foundation for modern antibody-based medicine.

Edelman's research helped launch the field of molecular immunology, and paved the way for monoclonal antibody therapies, organ transplant compatibility testing, modern diagnostic assays, and many of today's targeted cancer and autoimmune treatments. In 1972, Edelman shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for discovering the chemical structure of antibodies. Not one to rest on his laurels, Edelman would later turn his attention to embryology and neuroscience, pioneering research on cell adhesion molecules and developing his influential theory of "Neural Darwinism" in the quest to understand consciousness itself.

10/14/2026

Findings from Rockefeller's Paul Cohen suggest that repurposing losartan—a commonly prescribed blood-pressure drug—may be a clinically viable method of stimulating , which has been linked to improved health and, reported for the first time in this study, health.

The Cohen lab, along with colleagues at Weill Cornell Medicine and Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, initially discovered the connection between brown fat and the drug class to which losartan belongs, known as angiotensin receptor blockers (ARBs), through an analysis of over 100,000 patients using next-generation analytical tools.

Previous work had suggested a link between brown fat and reduced prevalence of cardiovascular disease. In this work, the team now demonstrates that in addition to the having brown fat or not, a higher degree of brown fat activity is connected to enhanced cardiometabolic benefits.

They also explored these associations across the body’s six brown fat depots, with increased activity in the armpit (axillary) depot being most strongly tied to cardiometabolic health. They uncovered some new connections as well, including a lower incidence of anxiety and depression in patients with the presence of brown fat.

🔗: https://bit.ly/47ZietL

10/12/2026

Register now for the 2026 Pearl Meister Greengard Prize ceremony, happening next Tuesday on October 20!

Catherine Dulac, a professor at Harvard University and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator, will be recognized for her groundbreaking research on the neurobiology of social behavior, which has led to fundamental discoveries in mouse models that resonate with our understanding of human emotions and interpersonal interactions.

She will be presented with the award by by Paula Zahn, a ten-time Emmy Award-winning journalist, television anchor, and executive producer.

PEARL MEISTER GREENGARD PRIZE An International Award Recognizing Outstanding Women in Biomedical Research TUESDAY, OCTOBER 20, 2026 5:45 – 6:30 PM Reception 6:30 – 7:30 PM Ceremony and Lecture Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Hall The Rockefeller University 1230 York Avenue at East 66th Street New York,...