The New York Pathological Society (NYPS), one of the country’s oldest societies devoted to pathology and various associated sciences, and its current Vice President, Dr. Sanjay Patel of the Weill Cornell Medicine (WCM) Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, recently hosted a Fall Mini-Symposium at WCM.
On November 22, approximately 90 medical professionals attended the event, including practicing pathologists, residents and fellows in training, and pathology-affiliated healthcare professionals from within and outside the region.
“It was a real honor to host the first in-person NYPS symposium ever held at WCM, and for our colleague Dr. Francesca Khani (right) to be a featured speaker,” said Dr. Patel. “Dr. Khani discussed the diagnostic complexities and prognostic implications of intraductal carcinoma of the prostate, a rare histomorphologic subtype, highlighting some of her own research efforts.”
Attendees also heard from Dr. Andrew Beck (left), CEO and Co-Founder of PathAI, a leading company developing artificial intelligence tools for the pathology clinical practice. Dr. Beck briefly reviewed the state-of-the-art in artificial intelligence-driven methodologies to augment morphology-based diagnostics in pathology, covered the evolving toolkit offered by PathAI, and highlighted recent impactful publications from the PathAI team detailing use case examples for enhanced evaluation of inflammatory bowel disease and liver cirrhosis.
The final speaker was Dr. Natasha Rekhtman (right), a world-renowned pulmonary pathologist at MSKCC, who led the audience through the diagnostic workup of an incredibly challenging case she encountered in practice, highlighting the power of molecular diagnostics to more precisely define and diagnose cancers whose origin remains elusive, in spite of comprehensive histologic and immunohistochemical evaluation.
“The heterogeneity in subject matter and presentation format among the speakers was uniformly well-received by the audience,” said Dr. Patel (left). The evening continued with a cocktail hour and buffet dinner in the Griffis Faculty Club, which provided a welcome opportunity for attendees to meet colleagues in an intimate setting, and for many to reconnect with old friends, colleagues, and former trainees.
“Based on the success of this symposium, the NYPS will seek additional opportunities to host similar events at WCM in the future,” added Dr. Patel.