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Picture 130 7th and 8th graders meeting and “test driving” a robot-doctor. Then picture them practicing their stitching and suturing skills and performing “virtual surgery” on a phantom skull. All this and more is on tap at Brainworks on Monday, March 11, 2013, at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. The interactive program is designed to interested middle school students in careers in science and medicine.

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“Introduction to the World of Stem Cells,” a program for high school students, is set for March 14 at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, and is one of three programs to be presented by the Department of Neurosurgery during Brain Awareness Week March 11-17, 2013. The annual “Brainworks” program for seventh and eighth graders will be from 10 a.m. to 1:10 p.m. on March 11; a two-day conference for scientific and health care professionals on nanomedicine for imaging and treatment will be on March 15 and 16. These programs are highly visual, extremely interactive and offer great opportunities for photos and interviews.

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Two patients freed from severe to disabling effects of dystonia through deep brain stimulation therapy continued to have symptom relief for months after their devices accidentally were fully or partly turned off, according to a report published online Feb. 11 in the journal Movement Disorders.

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Pioneering cardiologist, Asher Kimchi, MD, Clinical Chief of the Division of Cardiology and Medical Director of the Preventive and Consultative Heart Center of Excellence at the Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute in Los Angeles, and Diane Brinson, an insurance entrepreneur who founded a brokerage to serve high net worth individuals and businesses, have been named as honorees of the second annual HeartView Global Foundation Gala to be held Feb. 16 at the Four Seasons Hotel in Westlake Village.

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Patrick D. Lyden, MD, chair of Cedars-Sinai’s Department of Neurology and director of the Stroke Program, is available to comment on breaking news from the International Stroke Conference and the New England Journal of Medicine.

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Back in 2008, Lindsey Ross was a medical student and the recipient of Cedars-Sinai’s Pauletta and Denzel Washington Family Scholar in Neuroscience Award. Now, it is “Doctor” Lindsey Ross, and she’s back at Cedars-Sinai – this time as an M.D. and first-year resident in the medical center’s Neurosurgery department.

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An international multicenter clinical trial led by a Cedars-Sinai neurologist on the combination of brain cooling and “clot-busting” drug therapy after stroke has received Food and Drug Administration approval to expand from 50 patients to 400. This study, which includes the use of intravenous tissue plasminogen activator (IV tPA), the only FDA-approved treatment for acute stroke, is the latest in a series of clinical trials on brain cooling – controlled hypothermia – to reduce neurological damage after stroke.

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CORRECTED MEDIA ADVISORY - Hundreds of healthcare professionals at the Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute will wear red on Friday, Feb. 1, to mark National Go Red for Women Day.

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Researchers at the Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute, whose clinical trial results in 2012 demonstrated that stem cell therapy reduces scarring and regenerates healthy tissue after a heart attack, now have found that the stem cell technique boosts production of existing adult heart cells (cardiomyocytes) and spurs recruitment of existing stem cells that mature into heart cells. The findings, from a laboratory animal study, are published in EMBO Molecular Medicine online.

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Southern California pediatricians, pediatric neurologists and parents of children with inherited neurological diseases or nerve-related muscle disorders have a new resource for expert diagnostics, genetic testing, and state-of-the-art research and treatment facilities: Cedars-Sinai’s newly opened Pediatric Neurogenetics and Neuromuscular Clinic.

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Marc Troup Goodman, PhD, MPH, a nationally recognized expert on the links between diet, metabolism, genetics and cancer, has joined Cedars-Sinai’s Samuel Oschin Comprehensive Cancer Institute to advance the study of how environment and biology affect disease, and to lead an academic program in cancer prevention and genetics.

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Cedars-Sinai has been selected as one of 106 new Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) in Medicare, ensuring as many as 4 million Medicare beneficiaries across the United States now have access to high-quality, coordinated care, Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced today.

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Kevin Riepl arrived at Cedars-Sinai in October 2010, suffering from sudden heart failure that left him fighting for his life. Surgeons swiftly installed a heart pump and later transplanted a new heart, saving his life and turning him into an unexpected ambassador for organ donation. Now he is preparing to represent Cedars-Sinai‘s Comprehensive Transplant Center on the 2013 Donate Life Rose Parade float.

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Leon Morgenstern, MD, who led Cedars-Sinai’s Department of Surgery into international prominence and founded its Center for Healthcare Ethics, died Sunday in Los Angeles at the age of 93. A surgeon, scholar, humanist, medical researcher and prolific author, he remained active after his retirement and worked in his office up until the day of his death.

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Phoenix Houses of California and TEEN LINE today announced a new collaboration to provide substance abuse education and resources to Los Angeles area schools.

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Two of Southern California’s best-known orthopedic oncologists have joined Cedars-Sinai, enhancing a surgical team that treats some of the most complex and difficult types of cancer.

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Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute researchers have reprogrammed ordinary heart cells to become exact replicas of highly specialized pacemaker cells by injecting a single gene (Tbx18)–a major step forward in the decade-long search for a biological therapy to correct erratic and failing heartbeats.

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A Cedars-Sinai physician-scientist has been awarded a $3 million grant from the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine to study with new stem cell technology Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease, the most common inherited neurological disorder and which damages nerves that control muscles.

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Beth Y. Karlan, MD, director of the Women’s Cancer Program at the Cedars-Sinai Samuel Oschin Comprehensive Cancer Institute, was appointed by President Barack Obama to the National Cancer Advisory Board, a committee that advises the U.S. National Cancer Institute.

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Cedars-Sinai is one of the first five medical centers in the nation and the first in Los Angeles County to achieve Comprehensive Stroke Center Certification from The Joint Commission and the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association.

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Len Steckler, now in his 80s, is one of America’s most celebrated photographers and artists, having photographed the likes of Marilyn Monroe, author and poet, Carl Sandburg and others. What is remarkable is that he “sees” like never before AFTER losing an eye to cancer and experiencing a series of strokes (last year) that damaged both sides of his visual cortex. But he has come back in an amazing way.

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Tony Tommasi and his wife, Heather, both had brain tumors successfully removed by the same neurosurgeon – 11 years apart. They are available for interviews, as is their neurosurgeon, Keith L. Black, MD.

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Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute researchers have found in an initial clinical trial that a drug typically prescribed for erectile dysfunction or pulmonary hypertension restores blood flow to oxygen-starved muscles in patients with a type of muscular dystrophy that affects males, typically starting in childhood or adolescence.

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Surgical teams at Cedars-Sinai have reduced surgical site infections by more than 60 percent for patients who undergo colorectal procedures by introducing evidence-based protocols that are easy to follow and relatively low in cost.

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Richard A. Lewis, MD, a research and treatment expert in disorders that attack nerves, has been named director of the Electromyography Lab in the Department of Neurology and co-director of the Neuromuscular Clinic at Cedars-Sinai, joining one of the most comprehensive neuromuscular disease research teams in California. Before joining Cedars-Sinai, Lewis was vice chief of neurology and director of clinical neurophysiology at Harper University Hospital in Detroit. He also was professor and associate chair of neurology at Wayne State University School of Medicine, where he directed the Hiller Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis Center. He also was co-director of the Muscular Dystrophy Association Clinic at Detroit Medical Center and Director of the Inflammatory Neuropathy Center of Excellence.

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The November tipsheet from Cedars-Sinai includes a variety of patient feature and medical research story ideas. These include a husband and wife who both had brain tumors removed by Dr. Keith Black, a $20 million gift to the medical center by PIMCO founder Bill Gross and his wife, Sue; a patient feature about a softball player with Lou Gehrig's Disease, and more.

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Cedars-Sinai Medical Center has named the new surgical and interventional center in its soon-to-open Advanced Health Sciences Pavilion in honor of Bill and Sue Gross, philanthropists and donors of a $20 million gift toward the building that will bring together clinicians and researchers under one roof to accelerate biomedical discoveries and to speed those advances into clinical care.

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Just a little more than two years ago Sal Silva was an electrician and avid softball player - physically fit and enjoying life to the fullest. Today, he is confined to a wheelchair, unable to move his 215-pound frame even an inch. The culprit? Lou Gehrig’s Disease. ALS. But with a $17.8 million grant, researchers at Cedars-Sinai are developing what is believed will be the world’s first study for ALS using stem cells to deliver a drug that protects dying neurons.

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Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute researchers have found that an experimental compound may help stem the debilitating effects of muscular dystrophy by restoring normal blood flow to muscles affected by the genetic disorder.

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Patients unable to go to the polls to cast ballots in the Nov. 6 presidential election can vote on absentee basis under a Cedars-Sinai Medical Center volunteer program. More than 25 volunteers will visit hundreds of patient rooms to ensure that any registered voters who are Cedars-Sinai inpatients can exercise their right to vote.

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In the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit of the Maxine Dunitz Children’s Health Center, parents and volunteers celebrate Halloween by dressing babies in handmade costumes.

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Cedars-Sinai Samuel Oschin Comprehensive Cancer Institute, Johns Hopkins and the Prostate Cancer Foundation unveil National Proactive Surveillance Network for men with slow-growing, non-life threatening prostate cancer.

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For the 17th year in a row, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center has been honored with a national consumer award for having the best overall healthcare quality, doctors and nurses in the Los Angeles area based on an independent survey of households.

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'Tis the season for ghouls and ghosts, witches and skeletons, and the bane that arrives around fall to haunt our scales and waist lines: the holiday creep. "How you manage this holiday really sets the tone for how you will handle the rest of the season," said Adrienne Youdim, MD, medical director of the Cedars-Sinai Weight Loss Center. "It marks the beginning of a holiday season that is laden with sweets, pies, celebratory feasts, cocktails, parties and other temptations that can derail important lifestyle changes."

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Researchers at Cedars-Sinai’s Maxine Dunitz Neurosurgical Institute have found that a blood vessel-building gene boosts the ability of human bone marrow stem cells to sustain pancreatic recovery in a laboratory mouse model of insulin-dependent diabetes.

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Battling depression in patients with MS, new information on the increased risk of fatty pancreas and Type 2 diabetes in Latinos, and the effect of an immune-busting viatmin In the war with ‘superbugs' are just three of the items featured in this month's tipsheet from Cedars-Sinai.

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Living every day with a life-changing illness is discouraging enough, but Maryam Hosseinzadeh is one of 400,000 people in the United States battling multiple sclerosis, a disorder that by changing the brain’s makeup appears capable of generating the secondary ill of depression.

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In 2011, 90 percent of Cedars-Sinai liver transplant patients reached the one-year post-surgery milestone, giving the Cedars-Sinai Comprehensive Transplant Center the highest one-year liver transplant survival rate in Los Angeles County.The data also show that the survival rate for Cedars-Sinai liver transplant patients exceeds the national average of 88.5 percent.

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Leading scientists and clinicians from across the nation will discuss the latest findings on potential stem cell treatments for diabetes and eye diseases at the second Cedars-Sinai Regenerative Medicine Scientific Symposium.

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Paul W. Noble, MD, an international leader in pulmonary medicine, has been named chair of the Department of Medicine at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. Noble comes to Cedars-Sinai from Duke University Medical Center in Durham, N.C., where he has been professor and chief of the Division of Pulmonary, Allergy and Critical Care Medicine since 2006.

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Latinos are more likely to store fat in the pancreas and are less able to compensate by excreting additional insulin, a Cedars-Sinai study shows. The research examining overweight, prediabetic patients, published online by Diabetes Care, is part of a focus by Cedars-Sinai’s Heart Institute, Biomedical Imaging Research Institute and Diabetes and Obesity Research Institute, to identify biological measures that could help predict which patients are likely to develop type 2 diabetes.

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A team of Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute stem cell researchers today was awarded a $1.3 million grant from the California Institute of Regenerative Medicine to continue study of an experimental stem cell therapy that treats heart attack patients with heart-derived cells. Earlier this year, data from the first clinical trial of the stem cell treatment showed the therapy helped damaged hearts regrow healthy muscle.

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Cedars-Sinai researchers have found that a common vitamin may have the potential to provide a powerful weapon to fight certain “superbugs,” antibiotic-resistant staph infections that health experts see as a threat to public health.

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When aggressive, malignant tumors appear in more than one location in the brain, patient survival tends to be significantly shorter than when the disease starts as a single tumor, even though patients in both groups undergo virtually identical treatments, according to research at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center’s Maxine Dunitz Neurosurgical Research Institute.The findings are published in the Aug. 24 Journal of Neurosurgery, and are strictly embargoed until 10 a.m. EDT on that date.

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An experimental immune-based therapy more than doubled median survival of patients diagnosed with the most aggressive malignant brain tumor, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center researchers reported in Cancer Immunology, Immunotherapy.

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Evan Zahn, MD, an expert in treating children born with life-threatening structural heart problems, has joined the Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute to advance the study of congenital heart disease and develop more minimally invasive treatments.

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Cedars-Sinai Regenerative Medicine Institute today was awarded a $17.8 million grant from the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine to develop stem cell treatments for patients with ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease, a progressive, fatal and currently incurable neurodegenerative disease.