Monday, October 21, 2019
Volume LXIII, Issue 8
sbstatesman.com
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2019 Diversity Issue 2019 Mental Health Issue
President Bernstein gives address on university
By Samantha Robinson and Brianne Ledda
Assistant News Editor and News Editior
Interim President Michael Bernstein reflected on the progress Stony Brook University (SBU) has made in the past year during his first address to the university on Wednesday, Oct. 16. During his speech, Bernstein highlighted budget improvements, an influx of research funds, planned renovations to several school facilities and the university’s top spot in several media rankings. Bernstein also emphasized diversity during several points of his address, noting that “here at Stony Brook, this is a welcoming, inclusive and secure environment.” “We resolutely believe, as scholars, as scientists, as educators, as artists, that [a] diverse and inclusive population generates optimal results in research, in scholarship, in our thinking, in education, in mentorship in professional service,” he said. “The more diverse a population, the better the results, and certainly the more effective in education we provide to our students.” Joking that talking about the budget would “bum” the audience
EMMA HARRIS / THE STATESMAN
Interim President Michael Bernstein gives his first address to the university on Wednesday, Oct. 16 in the Staller Center. During the address, Bernstein reflected on the progress the university has made in the past year. out after he mentioned several university highs, Bernstein noted that SBU has made “remarkable progress” towards stabilizing its budget following a multi-million dollar deficit. He pointed to increased revenue from “various tuition and fee increases that have been granted by the state government,” online education and other initiatives and cut-backs with streamlined operations and a hiring freeze that was loosened last month. The New York State budget passed in 2017 allows for tuition to increase $200 every year for four years, ac-
cording to a 2018 budget message from former university president, Samuel Stanley. In addition, to compensate for the budget deficit, the university announced that it would “forego $3.7M in Excelsior tuition for the next four years since tuition remains flat for the Excelsior scholarship program until the 2021-2022 academic year.” Tuition went up $200 per academic year at all SUNY campuses this fall. Bernstein emphasized that the university is taking a strategic approach to decision-making.
“We have got to make choices. That’s hard to do,” he said. “And the best way to do it, harkening back to my earlier comments, is to share governance structures that mobilize effective data and metrics to drive optimal transparent and credible, accountable decisions.” Even still, with a tight budget, research is flourishing at the university. Total spending on research and development activities rose from $238 million in 2017 to $245 million in 2018, a record high for the university. Sponsored research also rose to a
record high last year, at almost $192 million. That number is lower so far in 2019, at $180.6 million. The university hasn’t slowed its clip on development either. The Student Union, which has been under construction since 2016, will be opening in March of 2020. A new building is going up on the university’s research campus, and an indoor practice facility for student athletes is under construction. New residence halls are planned in TaContinued on page 4
SBU holds Commons Day Pancreatic cancer drug reaches Phase III status By Gabby Pardo Opinions Editor
First-year students piled into the Island Federal Credit Union Arena on Wed. Oct. 16 for Commons Day to listen to producer and writer, Janet Mock, the author of the first-year reading this year. Mock’s memoir, “Redefining Realness: My Path to Womanhood, Identity, Love & So Much More” was a required reading for all firstyear students for their 101 seminar class. The memoir talks about Mock’s life growing up in Hawaii as well as her obstacles and triumphs as a black, transgender woman. She is the first transgender person to ever speak at Stony Brook’s Commons Day. “I was just really happy that my book was chosen for Commons Day,” Mock said during a book signing after her speech. “It’s [Commons Day], one of the biggest wide ranging reading initiatives that colleges tend to have and I’m glad to be apart of the tradition.”
Commons Day is a yearly tradition at Stony Brook, where the author of the first-year reading comes in to speak to students. Mock spoke about discrimination — specifically the controversy behind Title VII, which is supposed to prevent discrimination based on gender and race — as well as the new Netflix show she directs, “Pose.” Mock was the first trans woman to sign a deal with Netflix, putting the FX show on the streaming service. “When I first stepped forward with my story, there weren’t many examples of trans women specifically young trans women and trans people of color represented in the media,” Mock said to the audience. “Federally right now, we just saw the arguments from the Supreme Court last week about Title VII, and the fact about whether being LGBTQ whether gender identity and sexual orientation are actually protected under Title VII.”
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By Meenu Johnkutty Contributing Writer
A pancreatic cancer drug discovered in professors Paul Bingham and Zuzana Zachar’s lab in the Department of Biochemistry and Cell Biology at Stony Brook University has now entered Phase III, or multi-center testing stage. During the multi-center testing stage, the drug will be tested among qualifying patients in clinical research centers nationwide, including Stony Brook Cancer Center. The trial will use a combination of FOLFIRINOX and CPI-613 — a partial inhibitor of the tricarboxylic acid (TCA) cycle, a pathway used in the mitochondria for glucose metabolism — in metastatic pancreatic cancer patients. Dr. Minsig Choi, an attending physician who specializes in gastrointestinal medical oncology, is the principal investigator of the trial. FOLFIRINOX is a chemotherapy regimen that uses multiple drugs to kill cancer cells. The use of CPI-613,
a lipoate analog — a chemically equivalent compound similar to one of the intermediates in the TCA cycle — may increase the vulnerability of cancer cells to traditional chemotherapy regimens by inhibiting cancer cells’ almost “addictive” use of the TCA cycle, Choi explained. Thus, combinational therapy may improve life expectancy for patients. “While normal cells can use other pathways when the TCA cycle is inhibited, cancer cells are more sensitive to changes in the TCA cycle,” Choi said. According to Choi, metastatic pancreatic cancer is one of the most difficult forms of cancer to tackle. Stage one and stage two pancreatic cancer can often be treated surgically and followed with chemotherapy regimens. Patients who forgo treatment live up to three months after a diagnosis has been made. According to Columbia University’s Pancreas Center website, the percentage of patients with metastatic pancreatic cancer who live past five years sits at 2.4%.
With traditional chemotherapy regimens, patients can live up to one year. However, Phase I and Phase II clinical trial results of FOLFIRINOX and CPI-613 has pushed patient life expectancy past the 20-month mark, post initial diagnosis, according to Choi. “The Phase I/II trial had 17 evaluable patients,” Bingham wrote in an email. “Though this is a relatively small number, the effects were so large that we had adequate statistical power to motivate the Phase III trials now underway.” To advance a drug to Phase III status is no simple task. Decades of bench research showing the efficacy and potency of a drug are often required before a drug can be developed for clinical trials. CPI-613’s discovery can be traced back to Bingham and Zachar’s laboratory. Having worked for the past 18-20 years in the field of cancer research, their last seven years heavily focused Continued on page 4