The News was one of the first visitors to the Peabody’s new exhibits, which feature 2,215 of the 14 million specimens in its collection. The News walks through highlights here.

Main entrance and first floor

Upon walking through the main entrance, guests first encounter a family of four Pteranodon sternbergi. The male flying reptile dinosaur — with an almost 20-foot wingspan — is displayed, wings outstretched, above the information desk. The female fossil climbs along the wall, and two baby Pteranodon sternbergi perch on a neighboring ledge. Like many of the Peabody’s renovations, guests can view this fossil exhibit up close from the second floor.

After stepping through the front door, visitors enter the Burke Hall of Dinosaurs. 

The unmistakable centerpiece is the towering 75-foot-long Brontosaurus, which hangs from the ceiling in its totality. 

As opposed to its former display in the Peabody, the Brontosaurus is now arranged slightly differently than before, reflecting recent scientific discoveries. One of the most notable corrections is its lifted tail. Previously, paleontologists thought that Brontosauruses dragged their tails on the ground.

“When ours was [originally] mounted, it had an unusual kink in it with the tail going down,” Susan Butts, the director of collections and research at the Peabody, told the News. “Biomechanically, the bones don’t move like that.”

The fossil also includes 27 additional vertebrae and ventral ribs based on additional discoveries. Curators also remounted the Brontosaurus’ head to be more proportional to the rest of the body.

The Stegosaurus, with its characteristic kite-shaped plates on its back, is another one of the Hall’s highlights.

Like the Brontosaurus — and many other exhibits in the Peabody — the new Stegosaurus display more accurately depicts the species, Butts said. The exhibit was corrected based on an undergraduate’s senior thesis, which identified previous errors. Following the research, the Peabody resized the dinosaur’s legs to be more proportional to its body, decreased the number of tail spikes from eight to four, and rearranged the back plates, Butts said.

Along the upper wall of the Hall, “The Age of Reptiles” mural serves as an artistic timeline of life on Earth. Painted by Rudolph F. Zallinger ’42 ART ’71 in 1947 as a fresco for the Peabody, the 110-foot painting captures Earth from the Late Devonian to the Cretaceous period. Butts noted that the mural reflects the scientific knowledge of life during the 1940s, meaning the Brontosaurus in the painting still has a dragging tail.

However, visitors don’t interact with only land-based dinosaurs. They are also introduced to the Ancient Ocean in the Hall, where a collection of extinct sea creatures brings to life the world from over 500 years ago. Now, 160 invertebrates are on display, compared to the 26 that were up before the renovations.

According to Butts, the new exhibits highlight some of the most famous pieces in the Peabody’s collections, including sea scorpions, trilobites — marine arthropods that “conquered prehistoric oceans” — and mollusk-like ammonites.

As visitors walk through the first floor, history unfolds from life in the Ancient Ocean to human evolution. 

“The World of Change”

66 million years ago, an asteroid hit the Earth, causing over 75 percent of plants and animals to go extinct. The climate and life on the planet were dramatically transformed.

The “World of Change” gallery captures the new life forms that thrived on the planet in its new warm greenhouse environment. The exhibit focuses on the last surviving dinosaurs, birds and mammals following the mass extinction. 

The center of the room features a fossil of a Megacerops, a herbivorous mammal that flourished during this time. Other fossils of herbivores and their adaptive features — including strong and flat molars that could chew through fibrous plants — show Earth as it was 66 million years ago. 

Over time, the Earth began to cool down. By 23 million years ago, the planet became an Icehouse. The following exhibits in the Peabody highlight new lifeforms that thrived in the cooler environment, which eventually gave way to grasslands and hominins — including the human species. 

The human footprint

The Peabody has a new exhibition dedicated to human evolution. Along with panels detailing the impact human evolution has had on the planet, it also features a timeline of human evolution, beginning eight million years ago, when the common ancestor of humans and chimpanzees first appeared. 

“The curator made this as a braided stream,” Butts said. “One of the things that’s really interesting about humans now is that we’re the only species. That’s rare.”

The exhibits attempt to describe the flow of evolution and the different migratory patterns of evolving human ancestors, with Africa at its center. On one panel, visitors can see various bronze-cast skulls, which represent different human species, each of which has its own distinctive adaptive features, such as brain size. 

The gallery’s selections also outline how human existence has impacted the Earth. The Peabody shows how research on its collections has shown the impact of human life on animals, plants and other resources.

For Gonzalo Giribet, the director and curator of the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University, these vast collections are one of the strengths of university museums, especially when tracking the impact of climate change. 

“We are doing genetic studies on specimens that were collected 10, 50 and 100 years ago, so we see how the genomes of these organisms have changed through time,” Giribet said. “We can see how they respond to climatic variables, population changes or respond to invasive species.”

The rest of the gallery exhibits different animals that once populated the Earth, including land giants, such as the wooly mammoth.    

Second floor

The Peabody’s second floor features human culture galleries, including exhibits on the History of Science and Technology, Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia and Mesoamerican and Andean civilizations.

The History of Science and Technology exhibit also describes Yale’s history with science, research and technology. The Sheffield Scientific School at Yale, which was open from 1847 to 1956, helped develop numerous notable scientists and inventors. 

The exhibit also includes labels that explain the school was partially funded by seized Indigenous lands and profits accrued from slavery-associated activities. 

“Eternal Cities” is a structural artwork created by Mohamad Hafez, a Syrian-American artist and architect, who also owns the Pistachio Cafes. The piece, which is a collaboration between Hafez and the Peabody, attempts to represent the millennia of cultures that have shaped Damascus and other cities in the Middle East. 

The artwork includes 3D prints of the Babylonian Collection, found on the neighboring wall of “Eternal Cities.”

“This piece is meant to evoke Damascus or another Middle Eastern city and the millennia of cultures that have existed in this place,” Kailen Rogers, the associate director of exhibitions at the Peabody, told the News. “There’s a nod to the contemporary destruction and loss of culture in the area. There’s also a lot of hope. There are plants, laundry and a lot of glittery gold.”

Beyond the Babylonian collection, the second floor also holds many artifacts from Ancient Egypt and Mesoamerican and Andean civilizations. Some of the pieces in these exhibits, Rogers said, are on loan from the Yale University Art Gallery.

Only the first two floors are currently open to visitors. The Peabody will open the third floor to visitors at an undetermined date in the future.

Though it was previously free to only Yale students and faculty, the Peabody now offers free admission to the general public.

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Based out of the Sustainable Health Initiative, or SHI, at the Yale Global Health Institute, the Venture Development Program helps undergraduates and graduate students make their health startups a reality. In collaboration with TSAI City, the program supports the development of innovative solutions to some of the world’s most pressing health issues. This spring, there are 12 teams participating in the program. 

“It can be very scary and daunting to just pull a company out of thin air, especially when you’re a student,” said SHI Venture Development Program fellow Rod Bravo, who helps mentor each team. “Having a sense of belonging and structure that we have been building here allows us to appropriately support global health venture creation.”

SHI was founded in 2019 by Sten Vermund, the former dean of the School of Public Health, to create a space that combines global health work and the University’s innovation ecosystem. 

The initiative quickly partnered with businesses and incubators in India. After SHI identified a few entrepreneurs with potential global health ventures, they sent them to India to work with incubators and scale their projects, said Terese Chahine, a School of Management lecturer in social entrepreneurship and an advisor at SHI. 

Then, the COVID-19 pandemic hit. The SHI held a mini-speaker series and continued to offer mini-grants for students’ projects. As the pandemic continued, SHI leaders decided to take the program in a new direction.

“We started to think about how we could nurture global health innovation without necessarily traveling,” said Fatema Basrai, the managing director of SHI. “So that’s when we started kind of focusing more on the Yale community, particularly student-led global health innovations.”

In the fall of 2023, SHI developed a new cohort system. After students apply to the program with potential start-up ideas, they get paired up with one of the two student fellows, who provide each team with guidance and advice. 

The program also has other perks. They have a speaker series where those with global health start-ups share their own experiences. It also houses mentors-in-residence, like Emily Sheldon, the co-founder of the African Health Innovation Center, who offers students additional counsel. 

“I think this cohort model has been helpful and successful,” Basrai told the News. “We’ve gotten good feedback from the students that they really enjoy coming together in person, learning from a speaker, and getting time to get to know each other.”

Bravo said that students enter the program with their startups at different stages of evolution. While some students are still developing a business plan for their project, others already have prototypes and are ready to attain additional funding.

“Fostering that seed to become someone who could be an entrepreneur — that in and of itself, I think, is part of the University’s responsibility,” Bravo said.

Braeden Cullen ’27 is a co-founder of Spinertia, a startup that uses AI to give athletic trainers and medical professionals a visualization of live spinal movements, who also participates in the program. For him, the diversity of expertise in the startups has created a collaborative environment.

“Biotech ventures specifically are really difficult to get off the ground,” Cullen said. “There’s a really high knowledge barrier that stops a lot of people from going super deep. SHI makes it a lot more approachable.” 

SHI can access faculty and resources from the School of Public Health and the Institute of Global Health. They have also collaborated with Yale Ventures and InnovateHealth, which have helped offer intellectual property protection and pitch competitions. 

For Basrai, though, TSAI City has been crucial to the development of the Venture Development program, helping participants learn how to pitch an idea or build a financial model. 

“SHI Innovators are able to benefit from the whole ecosystem, where they’ll get a seed grant from InnovateHealth, then they’ll go to an accelerator workshop at TSAI,” Chahine told the News. “And then they might partner with faculty and get advice from YaleVenture. Each one builds on what the other one does.”

Still, the SHI ventures go beyond the development phase. Many go on to make a real-world impact on society. Developed by Blake Robertson SPH ’24, “Upkeep,” for example, is a comprehensive database that uses AI to provide a better health experience for older adults. He has since interviewed the geriatric community and connected with state government Medicaid offices to gain resources and improve the efficacy of his product. 

MiChaela Barker’s SOM ’24 SPH ’24 developed “Matcha Scrubs,” which produces satin-lined scrub caps that are designed for people with different hairstyles to promote diversity in the medical profession. Sooah Park ’27 created “SHED,” an app that seeks to use videos and interactive exercises to provide culturally conscious sexual education. Clara Guo SOM ’24 MED ’24 developed “Lucid. Care,” a behavioral health diagnostic and monitoring platform. 

“A lot of the founders that are coming out of SHI consider the needs of local and global communities,” Bravo said. “It has all been formed by what the people of this community need, whether they’re patients, whether they’re elderly populations, and the list kind of goes on and on.” 

As the program looks to the future, Bravo said he hopes it will expand to a full-year cohort. Chahine, the SOM lecturer, also wants the program to support more ventures that respond to lived experiences. 

“We want to begin supporting individuals who don’t have the academic expertise or the network or the funding or the research that someone at Yale would have,” Chahine said. “Can we think about using Yale to impact the rest of the world that can actually allow Yale students to impact others globally?”

Applications for the SHI Venture Development Program’s fall 2024 cohort will open next semester. 

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Lin, a professor of cell biology and founding director of the Yale Stem Cell Center, was honored for his contributions to stem cell research. The prize, conferred by the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, was first announced through a press release on the Academy’s website on Jan. 31.

“I feel extremely honored by the prize because it represents a seal of approval for my research by the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, a distinguished learned society established by the Founding Fathers in 1780,” Lin told the News. “It encourages me to continue pushing the boundaries of scientific knowledge.” 

Roughly 150 people attended the ceremony, including members of the Academy, fellow faculty members at the School of Medicine and many of Lin’s current and former research group members and students. University President Peter Salovey gave opening and closing remarks, while David Oxtoby, president of the American Academy, gave an introduction highlighting Lin’s achievements. Nancy Brown, the dean of the School of Medicine, presented the prize to Lin. 

The speakers praised Lin’s contributions to the fields of stem cell biology, reproductive biology and  developmental biology. 

Lin extensively researched stem cell niche theory, which describes the microenvironment that sends signals to stem cells and allows them to self-renew. He also discovered Argonaute/Piwi genes, which play “indispensable roles” in stem cell self-renewal mechanisms and germline development, per Lin. 

“Your pioneering work, which includes the demonstration of stem cell asymmetric division, the proof of the stem cell niche theory, and the discoveries of the Argonaute/Piwi gene family and piRNAs, has illuminated the complex interplay of molecular signals that govern stem cell self-renewal and differentiation,” Brown said to Lin while giving him the award. “These discoveries have opened, as you have described, a ‘new world of genes’ and new avenues for therapeutic intervention in regenerative medicine.”

Lin joined the Yale faculty in 2006 and established the Yale Stem Cell Center, having founded and directed the Duke Stem Cell Research Program the year prior. Under his direction, the Yale Stem Cell Center has expanded from two member labs to 102 labs, making it among the largest stem cell research organizations in the world.

Beyond his research, Lin has also mentored researchers and graduate students who have gone on to establish their own labs. Katherine Uyhazi GRD ’12 MED ’13, Lin’s first MD/PhD student at Yale, started her lab at the University of Pennsylvania in 2021. In an email to the News, Uyhazi emphasized Lin’s ability to guide students through both scientific and personal questions.

“His mentorship also extends beyond science — he once gave a lab meeting on finding happiness in your career!” Uyhazi wrote. “‘Enjoy the process itself, not just the end goal,’ he said. This advice has stuck with me over the years and I now find myself passing on his words of wisdom to my own students.”

Daniel Cox, who was Lin’s first-ever graduate student at Duke University, now serves as director of the Neuroscience Institute at Georgia State University. Cox said that Lin’s research attracted him even before they both joined Duke.

“I actually reached out to him when he was still at the Carnegie Institute in his postdoc, and [Lin was] like, ‘how do you find me?’ But I had been following his work, even in his postdoctoral studies,” Cox said. “By the time I knew he was coming to Duke, I was so excited. Even as a junior faculty member, it was clear that he was going to be a mover and shaker and intellectual thought leader in the field.”

Oxtoby, the Academy president, emphasized how infrequently the Academy confers the Amory Prize. The Academy’s prize committee presented just two out of its eleven total prizes in 2024 as Lin received the Amory Prize and British-American philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah received the Don M. Randel Award for Humanistic Studies.

Originally known as the Francis Amory Septennial Prize, the Amory Prize was first awarded in 1940 to researchers who contribute “conspicuously meritorious work” to the “treatment and cure of diseases and derangement of the human sexual generative organs in general.” Since then, the Academy has broadened the scope of the award to include reproductive medicine and physiology more generally. 

Before Lin, the prize was most recently awarded in 2020 to Ruth Lehmann and Gertrud Schüpbach for their research in DNA repair, embryonic development, RNA regulation and stem cell research. 

Lin’s professional path has not been without challenges. As a Chinese-born academic who graduated from Fudan University in 1982, Lin said factors outside of the scientific process, such as geopolitics, have impacted him and other Chinese-American scientists.

“In the past few years, geopolitical tensions between the US and China have affected Chinese-American scientists, including myself, and STEM students from China,” Lin wrote. “McCarthyism-like sentiments among some right-wing politicians sparked fear, leading to a sharp decline in talent retention since 2018.” 

In March 2022, the University suspended Lin and placed him on paid administrative leave amid a Department of Justice investigation. 

Lin received an outpouring of support from University faculty members, who wrote multiple letters defending Lin and expressing concern over the University’s response to the investigation, which they claimed lacked due process. Faculty members also suggested that Lin was unfairly targeted on the basis of his Chinese descent. 

The DOJ never publicly revealed its allegations and eventually dropped the investigation, and Lin was reinstated to his lab in April 2022.

“As we acknowledge the unique experiences that come with being an Asian American researcher, it’s crucial to highlight that the pursuit of scientific excellence transcends cultural or ethnic boundaries,” Lin wrote. “It’s my hope that by sharing my experiences, I can inspire young researchers from diverse backgrounds to pursue their passions in science, regardless of the obstacles they may face.”

Lin also expressed hope that recent developments, such as the September 2023 establishment of the Asian Faculty Association at Yale — which was founded to “promote and protect” Asian and Asian American faculty members — and the recognition of Yan Fuqing, School of Medicine class of 1909 and the first Asian graduate from the medical school, indicate growing support for Chinese- and Asian-American faculty. 

“Upon learning about my prize, the University’s leadership once again demonstrated their support by hosting a wonderful ceremony and celebration for me,” Lin wrote. “I have all reason to believe that Asian-American faculty will continue to thrive at Yale.”

The Academy elected 269 new members out of 1,200 nominees in 2023.

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Dengue flu is a tropical viral disease that spreads to humans through the bite of an infected Aedes mosquito. Though dengue is not contagious from person to person, mosquitoes that previously did not carry the disease can become newly infected after biting an infected person, further propagating the disease’s spread through the population. Dengue can cause severe flu-like symptoms — and some cases can be deadly. 

While the disease is most prevalent in South America from June to September, during and after the monsoon season, there is now an alarming rate of cases in Brazil and other South American countries. According to Albert Ko, the professor of public health at the School of Public Health, there have been over two million cases reported in Brazil in 2024.

“2024 [is] one of the largest epidemics this country has experienced,” Ko wrote in an email to the News. 

Ko wrote that he expects the outbreak in Brazil to worsen in the coming months because the northeast part of the country is only now entering peak dengue season. 

The disease has begun to creep northward, causing concern from the CDC. On Monday, the Puerto Rico Department of Health declared dengue an epidemic following a recent case spike. 

“While dengue virus spread is right now mainly an issue in South-East Asia and in Central and South America and equatorial Africa … it is likely that the vectors that transmit viruses like dengue will spread to new geographic areas,” David Martinez, a professor at the School of Medicine who studies viral pathogens, wrote in an email to the News. “We are starting to see the local, albeit limited, transmission of dengue virus in some southern U.S. states that have the climate to support mosquito population growth and spread.” 

Dengue is unique from other mosquito-borne infections, Martinez noted, in that the immune system recognizes each of its four distinct variations differently, meaning that immunity to one form of the virus typically does not grant immunity to the others. 

Further, unlike other infectious diseases, multiple dengue infections can often bring about worse cases. Martinez said that dengue’s specific characteristics make it particularly difficult to counter. 

“Dengue virus has another trick up its sleeve compared to other mosquito-borne [viruses]: it can use host antibody immunity as a “Trojan horse” to exacerbate disease through a phenomenon called ‘antibody-dependent enhancement of disease,’” Martinez wrote. “Therefore, immunity to [one] dengue virus [variant] can make disease worse.” 

According to Martinez and Nathan Grubaugh, an epidemiology professor at the School of Public Health, climate change has contributed to the unprecedented outbreak of dengue this year in several ways. Increased temperature and rainfall have extended mosquito breeding grounds, and mosquitoes are now present in areas that were previously not warm enough for breeding.

Florida, California and Texas — coastal states that have been affected by climate change — have particularly seen an increase in dengue over the past few years. 

These changing climate conditions also lead to longer lifespans for mosquitoes and, thus, longer dengue seasons. A 2023 study led by the University of Michigan School of Public Health found that the transmission potential of dengue may increase by 10 to 20 percent in the next 30 years due to climate change. 

Beyond climate change, Grubaugh explained that this year’s rapid rise in cases may be due to the re-emergence of serotype 3, a previously uncommon dengue variant to which the population has little immunity.

Brazil was the first country to roll out a public vaccine campaign against dengue. However, Grubaugh said this may not be enough to stop the epidemic.

“While it is exciting to see Brazil administer a dengue vaccine (Qdenga from Takada), their supplies are very limited and something like only 10 percent of the population would have access,” Grubaugh wrote. “On top of this, the vaccine is not very effective at protecting against all serotypes and variants of dengue virus. So the likelihood that dengue vaccination actually significantly halts spread in 2024 is quite low.”

Public education in resource-limited areas could help improve the situation, Martinez said. Individuals can help curb its spread by removing common household objects that become reservoirs near the home, as they can become breeding grounds for mosquitoes. 

He also emphasized that there needs to be more “investment in basic science” to understand specifically how the virus causes disease and to help develop antiviral drugs that reduce case severity.

Robert Dubrow, a professor of epidemiology at the School of Public Health, highlighted that the spread of dengue should serve as a warning for the spread of other viral infections due to climate change. 

“As the planet warms, we can expect Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus, the two mosquito species that can carry the dengue, chikungunya, and Zika viruses, to spread to higher altitudes and latitudes,” Dubrow wrote in an email to the News. “It’s vital for the public health system to stay vigilant.”

There are approximately 550 cases of dengue fever a year in the continental United States. 

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The Connecticut Office of Health Strategy signed off on YNHHS’s certificate of need, or CON, application to buy Waterbury Hospital, Rockville General Hospital and Manchester Memorial Hospital from Prospect Medical Holdings. Negotiations for YNHHS to acquire the financially troubled hospitals have been ongoing since October 2022. 

The state’s approval of the CON greenlights the way for YNHHS to finalize the terms of the acquisition deal with Prospect Medical Holdings, keeping the hospitals from shuttering their doors. The acquisition would see YNHHS expand its total bed count by 700 and add about 4,400 additional employees, for a total of approximately 33,400. The for-profit Prospect hospitals would also be reverted to non-profit status.

“I am glad that all the parties have been able to reach an agreement on this transaction in a way that ensures that the residents who live in each of the hospitals’ host communities will continue to have local access to essential medical care, and the jobs of the employees who provide this care will be preserved under this new ownership,” Connecticut Governor Ned Lamont wrote in a statement. 

For over a year, Yale New Haven Health has been in negotiations with Prospect Medical Holdings and the state to iron out an agreement to acquire the three, Prospect-owned hospitals.

Following a six-week-long cyberattack on the three hospitals last August, Yale New Haven Health proposed a “Recovery Plan” that lowered its originally proposed purchase price of $435 million and asked the state to provide financial assistance for the deal. In return, the system would provide the three hospitals with support in their efforts to recover from the cyberattack.

Shortly after, negotiations between Yale New Haven Health, Prospect and Connecticut’s Office of Health Strategy for the acquisition deal went confidential to ensure that they continued as efficiently as possible.

“We continue to meet with all parties, including the Connecticut Office of Health Strategy and Prospect, CT to bring the transaction to a successful conclusion,” said Dana Marnane, director for public relations at Yale New Haven Health, in an email to the News in October.

State conditions on YNHHS

The new CON contains 46 conditions that the state’s Office of Health Strategy, or OHS, will require Yale to adhere to, including the hiring of an independent monitor for five years that reports to the OHS at the sole expense of YNHHS. 

“The [Independent Monitor] shall be responsible for monitoring NewCo’s compliance with all of the conditions set forth in this Agreed Settlement and shall produce a schedule of required reports and data to be shared with the [OHS],” the CON stated. 

Many conditions work to ensure current employees at the three hospitals can maintain their jobs. Notably, the agreement requires YNHHS to rehire all non-management employees and use their “best efforts … to minimize the elimination of individuals’ jobs.” YNHHS must also recognize all established bargaining agreements between hospital employees and the previous management. 

Other conditions focus on community-building efforts. YNHHS and the Prospect hospitals must have community representatives on its board of directors. In addition, the hospitals must hold community meetings to engage the public with hospital activities that allow community members to ask questions. 

The hospitals will also work with local health organizations and stakeholders to conduct a Community Health Needs Assessment to systematically identify community needs. To increase accessibility, YNHHS will also make culturally and linguistically appropriate services available and integrated into the hospitals’ operations. 

All three hospitals will adopt the YNHHS financial assistance policies, and all hospitals will continue to offer Medicaid services. Further, YNHHS must increase its aggregate community benefit expenditures across each hospital. 

“For-profit ownership of community hospitals — especially when tied to hedge funds — should never again be tolerated in our state,” John Brady, vice president of the statewide labor federation AFT Connecticut, wrote in an email to the News. “We have been consistent on our priorities – the health and well-being of our communities and caregivers.”

For five years, Northeast Medical Group — the medical foundation associated with YNHHS — will offer semi-annual reports on Medicaid patients’ access to specialty treatments, including medication-assisted treatment for substance misuse, dermatology, ENT services, neurology, orthopedics, and pain management. 

YNHHS will also invest $6 million in behavioral health services that target increasing access to mental health and substance use disorder treatment. 

“With today’s approval by the Office of Health Strategy, I encourage Prospect to work with Yale to reach a deal that will allow them to finalize this purchase and bring a much-needed resolution to this transaction,” Lamont wrote.

Healthcare providers, legislators push to finalize deal

Throughout the negotiation process, many healthcare professionals, legislators and health policy experts around the state have urged the deal should move forward, and should do so as quickly as possible.

Of concern to these individuals is the volatile financial status of Prospect Medical, and the effects that its for-profit business model has had on its hospitals’ ability to provide care.

Following the cyberattacks, State Senator Saud Anwar, co-chair of the Connecticut General Assembly Public Health Committee, told the News in October that the hospitals could not bill their patients or pay medical supply vendors.

As a result, the CT Mirror also reported that the state was also forced to provide a $7 million bailout to the hospitals, which were struggling to stay afloat after being unable to receive Medicaid reimbursements during the attacks. 

“This was a perfect storm from the hospitals’ perspective,” Anwar wrote in an email to the News. “They were already struggling financially, and the fact that their medical records and ability to see as many patients as they usually see, as well as their ability to bill patients as normal, resulted in a financial issue that harmed cash flow, making their ability to manage their finances significantly more difficult.”

Prospect owes the state at least $67.39 million in health provider taxes that date back to March 2022, according to three state tax liens filed against the California-based company. 

The company’s financial struggles and alleged mismanagement have generated widespread frustration among several Connecticut healthcare providers, who told the News that they continue to support the YNHHS purchase of the Prospect hospitals.

Those financial difficulties “call attention to the dire need for responsible, committed new ownership of ECHN’s hospitals,” said Diane Carlson, president of the Manchester Federation of LPNs and Techs United, AFT Local 5144, who works as a licensed practical nurse at Manchester Memorial Hospital. 

The state’s approval of the CON greenlights the way for Yale to finalize the terms of the acquisition. 

“Our patients and our caregivers deserve better than a hedge fund that fails to pay its fair share to the communities from which it profits,” she added.

According to Rep. Jason Doucette, D-Manchester, the state representative for one of the towns containing a Prospect hospital, Prospect’s management style has “negatively affected” the availability of vendors and supplies. 

He believes that Prospect’s financial woes also harm the morale of doctors, nurses and other hospital employees.

“The private equity model of doing business in health care, together with [Prospect’s] inability to refinance certain company debts, then compounded by the cyber attack in mid-2023, created a dire situation where the bills simply weren’t getting paid,” he wrote in an email to the News. “Most of the people I speak to in the community are hopeful that the acquisition by Yale will bring a significant overall improvement to the ECHN system generally, and that frankly anything is likely to be better than the current situation.”

As the deal moves forward after the state’s approval, however, healthcare professionals continue to provide care to Connecticut residents, even as they face uncertainty over future management and job prospects.

Annie-Marie Cerra, president of AFT Local 5055 for Manchester Memorial Hospital Nurses and an emergency department nurse at Manchester Memorial, highlighted healthcare workers’ continued commitment in an email to the News.

“This acquisition process has created a lot of anxiety for all of us. Despite that, our member nurses and health professionals – as well as our physician colleagues – have shown up every day in our hospitals to provide the excellent care our patients and their families deserve.”

Yale New Haven Hospital was founded as the General Hospital Society of Connecticut in 1826.

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Headquartered in New Haven, Arvinas achieved two drug development milestones last month. The breast cancer drug that it is jointly developing with Pfizer, called vepdegestrant, received “fast-track” federal review from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The company also administered the first human test dose of another drug, labeled ARV-102, which targets neurodegenerative illnesses such as Parkinson’s disease.

Arvinas credits its success to a proprietary technology called PROTAC, an abbreviation for the term ‘proteolysis-targeting chimeras.’ The drugs, taken orally, use cells’ biological machinery to break down disease-causing proteins within the body — an approach that creates a promising avenue for treating a wide range of diseases including cancer and certain neurological disorders.

Arvinas scientists say that the distinct protein-breakdown approach targets proteins that are widely recognized to cause disease, taking the guesswork out of choosing a biological target that might have unintended consequences — or none at all.

“We’ve proven that PROTAC will be a product … a drug that shows up in a bottle on a pharmacy shelf that someone can buy and take,” said Ron Peck, Arvinas’ former medical officer.

The FDA’s fast-track process is designed to accelerate the development and approval of drugs that are considered to potentially meet an unmet medical need. The drugs also must have sufficient data to show that they would be an important and effective potential therapy — criteria that Arvinas’ and Pfizer’s vepdegestrant could meet, said Ian Taylor, the company’s chief scientific officer. 

The breast cancer therapy is currently being evaluated in Phase 3 clinical trials that are evaluating its effectiveness in patients with advanced, or metastatic, breast cancer who have previously been treated with endocrine medications that affect hormones in the body. Vepdegestrant is also being tested in other Phase 3 clinical trials as a combination therapy with other medications, including the breast cancer drug palbociclib.

Meanwhile, Arvinas’ drug for neurodegenerative diseases, ARV-102, dosed its first human subject at the end of February. In a news release, the company detailed how the medication, in preclinical studies, targets a protein called leucine-rich repeat kinase 2, or LRRK2. 

Research suggests that increased expression and activity of LRRK2 are associated with brain diseases like Parkinson’s. In primate studies, the company says, ARV-102 reached deep into the brain to degrade LRRK2 by up to 90 percent.

Arvinas’s recent drug development advancements mirror a broader trend of growth within New Haven’s burgeoning biotech landscape. With its proximity to research institutions like Yale University and a supportive ecosystem for startups, Peck and other biotech entrepreneurs believe that the Connecticut area has emerged as a hub for pharmaceutical companies to innovate.

“Connecticut is a great place to do drug discovery and drug development,” said Martin Mackay, co-founder of the New Haven-based biopharmaceutical company Rallybio. “There is great talent here. We thought we’d be able to really build partnerships with top academics … we thought we could hire great people here.”

Founded in 2013, Arvinas spun off from the lab of Yale biochemist and professor Craig Crews, employing a group of 20 individuals. Since then, the company has ballooned in size to 450, said Taylor. Today, the company has four drugs in development, including vepdegestrant and ARV-102, and has been publicly traded on the stock market since 2018.

For Taylor, the fact that New Haven has a less-saturated biopharmaceutical industry than other cities has helped the company thrive. In a less crowded field, he said, startups have a greater opportunity to establish themselves as key players and expand their operations over time.

Compared with established biotech hubs like Boston or San Francisco, lower rent and overhead costs help startups with limited funding allocate more resources towards research and development, Taylor added.

Mackay described the significance of partnerships between academia, industry and local government in fueling innovation. Rallybio, for instance, launched out of the University of Connecticut’s technology incubator program in Farmington, giving the company access to the university’s offices and laboratories.

He highlighted how university and government partnerships helped Rallybio gain footing during the drug development process.

“I think it starts off with the state government being attractive to come into Connecticut: you feel wanted,” Mackay said. “There was a recognition that there were great people here, that you could actually build companies. Very welcoming local government and local politicians make it a great place to discover new medicines and develop the biotech industry.”

But Arvinas’s researchers still face challenges in drug development, including regulatory hurdles, funding constraints and scientific challenges.

New biopharmaceutical startups face high costs associated with running clinical trials. Though trial costs vary widely, a 2018 analysis found that the median expense for a single Phase 3 trial reached $19 million, with the most expensive multi-thousand patient trials reaching upwards of $340 million.

New Haven’s biopharmaceutical companies are no exception, even if rent costs are lower than in other cities. Rallybio, for instance, laid off nearly half its workforce last month, shrinking from 44 employees to 23. The money that Mackay’s company saved was used to obtain clinical trial data on pregnant mothers.

“You can pay in biotech dearly because you can’t raise the money that you need so easily,” Mackay said. “To extend the runway, we needed to make our money last longer. The people that we parted with were truly great human beings and great individuals, and it was kind of really hard for us to make those decisions. But we needed to make sure that we can get the data to see if this program is going to work”

According to Peck, researchers developing a new drug also face a fundamental obstacle: uncertainty that the molecules or biological mechanisms the drug targets will have positive outcomes for patients. 

But scientists like Taylor remain optimistic, particularly about the promise of Arvinas’ PROTAC technology. The technique, he believes, creates a new way to hit disease-causing proteins, over 80 percent of which are considered to be “non-druggable” by traditional drugs known as inhibitors. 

“The challenge is getting the molecules to have drug-like properties,” Peck said. “Would these things actually work in humans? It’s looked great in laboratory systems, but do they really work?” 

Arvinas is located at 395 Winchester Ave.

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One of those students, D’Alessandro de Afvdial, is a sixth-grader at Augusta Lewis Troup School. He told the News he had never been to a museum before stepping into the Peabody with his classmates.

Discussing the visit, de Afvdial said that he loved “discovering new things” and was especially excited to explore the Peabody’s exhibits on electricity and other technological inventions. 

“Come this summer, I would love to come here with my family,” he said.

Mayor Justin Elicker, Rep. Rosa DeLauro, NHPS Superintendent Madeline Negrón and New Haven Arts, Culture and Tourism Director Adriane Jefferson welcomed first graders from the Family Academy of Multilingual Exploration and sixth graders from the Augusta Lewis Troup School as the first visitors on Tuesday. 

Accompanied by their teachers, students gawked at the Burke Hall of Dinosaurs and exhibits on the evolution of the human species and the history of science and technology. 

“It sends a real statement that the first kids into this building are New Haven Public School kids from the community,” Elicker told the News. “On top of that, the fact that you now no longer have to pay to get into the Peabody just opens up this world to so many kids that previously wouldn’t have been able to explore this space.”

Following a $160-million donation from Edward P. Bass ’68, the Peabody underwent a four-year renovation, and is now free for all visitors in perpetuity, joining the Yale University Art Gallery and the Yale Center for British Art. 

Elicker said that while New Haveners missed being able to visit the Peabody’s collections during the renovation period — especially during the COVID-19 pandemic — the reopening has reminded people of its value to the community. 

“Of course, we missed coming in here,” Elicker said. “On the other hand, having been closed for so long, it made a lot of people realize just how special this space is, building up anticipation for today.” 

Beyond expanding and reorganizing its exhibition spaces, the Peabody is also set to increase educational programming for K-12 students and develop a partnership with NHPS. 

In an interview with the News, Superintendent Negrón said that the specifics of this partnership are still unclear. Initial discussions between NHPS and the Peabody began three weeks ago, though both parties demonstrated interest in forging a stronger relationship, she said.  

Nevertheless, she expressed optimism about how the Peabody’s new K-12 education center could offer opportunities to local students and enrich their educational experience. 

“I think [the Peabody] is an opportunity just to continue to expand on learning,” Negrón said. “For example, many of our kids are interested in having leadership roles and having an opportunity to go into all kinds of different fields. This could be a way that kids could come in and learn from the people who work here, what it means to hold one of these professions and explore academically.”

The Peabody will also enhance the exhibits’ educational experience through a new app called “Amuse.” 

According to Dakota Stipp, the company’s CEO and co-founder, Amuse was founded in 2019 in collaboration with Yale’s Center for Engineering and Innovative Design. Once visitors download the app, depending on where they are standing in the Peabody, they will receive videos, tidbits of information and other types of short-form content related to different exhibits. While the Peabody is the first museum to use the app, Stipp said he hopes to expand its use to other public spaces, including museums, parks and historic landmarks. 

Stipp said that Amuse accrues data on how visitors interact with the app, informing what types of future content the Peabody will develop. The app also allows users to learn more about the city, he said. 

“When you’re looking at the map of the museum, you can actually zoom out, and then you’ll find historic information about New Haven,” Stipp said.

For the next 29 days, the Peabody will be using a ticketed reservation system. 

The post Government officials celebrate opening of Peabody Museum appeared first on Yale Daily News.

Housed under the Dwight Hall Center for Public Service, the student group pairs roughly 50 undergraduates with residents suffering from neurodegenerative diseases. These volunteers visit patients once a week in three care facilities to offer social and emotional care. 

The group is led by co-presidents Rianna Raghunandan ’26 and Sarah Feng ’25, who help facilitate these interactions between Yale students and patients in nursing homes. 

“Our main mission is to alleviate some of the burdens that affect both the patient who is suffering from Alzheimer’s disease and also the nursing homes who take care of the patients,” Raghunandan said. “Nursing staff are in charge of so much medical care, but they don’t really have the time or energy to address the social withdrawal, the isolation and the loneliness that come with neurological diseases and being in a nursing home.” 

Raghunandan emphasized that Alzheimer’s disease affects a patient’s physical, social and emotional health. While many care facilities try to tend to all three facets, the visits by Alzheimer’s Buddies address the social and emotional areas integral to overall patient well-being, Raghunandan and Feng said.

Raghunandan and Feng added that they hope to bridge the gap between the isolating nature of neurological diseases and emotional care with volunteerism. For example, complexities within the healthcare system can make it difficult for individuals affected by neurodegenerative disorders to form genuine connections, Feng said. 

“Isolation can put you in a space where you don’t know how to ask for help,” Feng said. “I feel like with cognitive deficits and physical impairments, it can become worse, especially with such a big population.”

Though patients benefit from interacting with new students every week, the relationship is not one-sided, Raghunandan noted. Volunteers similarly benefit from the weekly visitations.

“There are not a lot of spaces currently where we can just kind of engage one-on-one with an older person,” Raghunandan said. “Volunteers can choose to repeat volunteering sessions with the same buddy, so it is interesting to keep building on these relationships.”

Volunteers don’t just chat with patients about their days and what they have done since their previous visit. Instead, they try to stimulate patients’ memories, delve further into residents’ stories and learn more about their lives. 

The Looking Glass Project, one of Alzhimer’s Buddies’ ongoing initiatives, seeks to document and memorialize the lived histories of patients with memory loss. Volunteers ask patients probing questions to learn more about their biographies. They also interview patients’ family members to corroborate the information. Ultimately, Feng said, they hope to commemorate patients by developing narratives of their lives. 

“Through the Looking Glass Project, we’re exploring and doing a deep dive into people’s lives — interviewing the patient and people around them to build a life biography through a journalistic point of view,” Feng said. “Even if they can’t exactly remember all of the details, it’s a way to celebrate them.” 

The Looking Glass Project was initially launched in 2023 by Jocelyn Ra ’22, who worked as a student researcher in Alzheimer’s Disease as an undergraduate. Primarily inspired by her experiences with patients throughout her undergraduate research, as well as the storytelling in Lewis Carroll’s “Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There,” Ra sought to create an initiative that helps patients and their families navigate the disorienting nature of neurodegenerative disorders.

According to Ra, the project has a three-pronged approach, aiming to benefit patients and their families, professional caregivers and students. 

“For the patients and for the patient families, the project serves as a way for them to preserve life,” Ra said. “For memory care facility staff, it helps them get to know their patients better in ways that might not come up in normal conversation. Students can see and know that diseases are not suffered in isolation and that they’re also part of the process to destigmatize [neurodegenerative diseases] and learn more.”

Hannah Barsouk ’25 co-leads the Looking Glass Project alongside Ra. She said that the ultimate goal is to expand nationally. While Alzheimer’s Buddies at Yale is one chapter of a national organization, the Looking Glass Project’s genesis is unique to New Haven. 

“The hope is that eventually this would be a permanent part of National Alzheimer’s Buddies — starting here at Yale,” Barsouk said.

The pair is in the process of expanding the Looking Glass Project to other universities. They aspire to add more volunteers and form long-term relationships with local partnering nursing homes and care centers.

Alzheimer’s Buddies at Yale is one of 40 chapters associated with the national network.

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Led by Eric Song, an associate research scientist and resident physician at the School of Medicine, the researchers found that injecting vaccines directly into the eyes of mice can activate an immune response, potentially protecting mice from brain infections caused by the herpes simplex virus. According to Song, their findings demonstrate that physicians could use the eye’s immune response to help fight bacteria and tumors. 

“We hear this phrase a lot: ‘the eye is like a window to the brain,’” Song told the News. “That’s kind of centered around this idea that the eye is central nervous system tissue, like the brain.” 

Song explained that when diseases affect the neurons, they are often observable in both the brain and the eye’s retina. His study demonstrated that immune reactions in the retina mirror those in the brain. His team discovered that stimulating the immune system in the retina can also protect the brain against diseases and tumors. 

“I think it’s important because this opens up a new anatomical avenue that hasn’t been described before,” Song said. “Our paper is the first to really show that there’s functional lymphatic vessels.” 

Song and his team primarily study “immune privilege,” a concept initially proposed in the 1940s which suggests that immune responses are significantly reduced in the brain and eyes. For a long time, the scientific community believed that these organs were immune-inactive, Song said. However, infections and autoimmune diseases still occur in these sites, which indicates that there is a present immune response distinct from other parts of the body. 

Song and his team previously discovered that the brain and eyes lack traditional lymphatic vessels, which help drain proteins and fluids. However, they identified that the membrane tissues surrounding these organs do contain lymphatic vessels, and physicians can manipulate these vessels to enhance immune responses.

The eye’s anterior and posterior compartments have different drainage systems to the lymph nodes, parts of the immune system that filter substances in the lymphatic fluid and contain white blood cells to help the body fight infections. 

In this study, Song and his team found that the posterior compartment drains through the optic nerve, which can be enhanced or inhibited to affect immune responses. Lymphatic vessels at the back of the eye and those surrounding the brain are interconnected and drain into the same lymph node, which facilitates a coordinated immune defense.  

They also discovered that blocking the lymphatic system’s communication in the optic nerve can reduce the immune system’s reaction to adeno-associated virus. This virus is often used in gene therapy, a technique that modifies a person’s gene to treat or cure a disease. 

They found that when the herpes vaccine is injected into the eye, it induces an immune response. By blocking this response, gene therapy could be more effective, as the vector viruses will not be attacked by the immune system, enabling the modification of genes. 

Ellen Foxman, a professor of immunobiology at the School of Medicine, noted that one of the initial FDA-approved gene therapies for a genetic eye disease had little effect because the body created an immune defense against the virus used to deliver the gene therapy. But now, Song and his team’s study offers a method to suppress this immune response, potentially enhancing gene therapy’s effectiveness. 

“It’s really exciting because there’s sort of a lore that the eye is an immunologically privileged site,” Foxman said. “It’s just that you don’t have any immune responses against things in the eye and the brain. But this challenges that dogma and says, ‘Well, let’s see, is that really true?’”

According to Akiko Iwasaki, Sterling Professor of Immunobiology at the School of Medicine, certain individuals have mutations or deficiencies in gene expression that lead to eye diseases. But gene therapy can compensate for these missing genes and introduce them to the body via viral vectors. While previously these vectors were quickly eliminated from the eye, Song’s findings suggest that scientists could obstruct this draining and prevent an immune response that would typically flush out this vector. 

“It’s significant because [the study] has many clinical implications,” Iwasaki said. “Now that we understand this new lymphatic drainage system, and [Song] manipulated it to enable gene therapy more efficiently. Other drugs can also benefit from this new knowledge and strategy of either blocking or enhancing the posterior eye drainage.”

Iwasaki also said that Song’s technique could be leveraged to use for gene therapy in the eye. 

The discovery opens up new avenues for treating a variety of eye-related diseases. Currently, Song and his team are investigating how their findings could be useful for treating other diseases that affect the eye, such as glaucoma and macular edema. He said that he will continue to look at other features of the nervous system and if there are other barriers to allowing effective immune responses.

“I think there’s still a lot of work to be done in order for anything to be translational,” Song said. “It should be our job and other labs to really focus down on specific diseases of the eye or the brain and see how this applies in those settings.”

Iwasaki also said scientists should conduct clinical trials to ensure the techniques are both effective and safe before applying their discoveries to human therapies. Nevertheless, Iwasaki said he is optimistic for its use in future clinical practice. 

“I suspect that translation of this finding is relatively straightforward,” Iwasaki said. 

The concept of gene therapy first arose in the 1960s. 

The post Yale researchers discover new immunological capabilities of the eye appeared first on Yale Daily News.

Tappe, who worked as an administrator at New York University before Yale, orchestrated the fraud scheme during her employment at NYU. She rerouted $3.5 million earmarked for university equity programs to two fictional shell companies. Using the companies, she stole over $660,000 to cover personal expenses, including an $80,000 swimming pool and over $500,000 in renovations to her home in Westport, Connecticut.

Tappe had previously been charged by the Manhattan District Attorney’s office with one count of first-degree money laundering, one count of second-degree grand larceny, two counts first-degree offering a false instrument for filing and two counts of first-degree falsifying business records. In January 2023, the DA’s office said that she had pleaded not guilty to all four counts of the indictment. 

However, in late February, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg Jr. and New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli announced that Tappe pleaded guilty to one count of second-degree grand larceny.

According to a press release from the office, Tappe will be sentenced to five years’ probation, will sign a written waiver of her right to appeal and provide full restitution totaling $663,209.07 in advance of sentencing.

“Cindy Tappe shamelessly used her high-ranking position at NYU to steal more than $660,000 in state funds,” DiNapoli said in a statement. “Her actions … deprived student programs of key resources meant to aid children with special needs and young English Language Learners.”

Before coming to Yale, Tappe was the director of finance and administration for NYU’s Metropolitan Center for Research on Equity and Transformation of Schools. During her time in the position, she redirected money from a pool of $23 million in New York state funding. The funding was allocated to administer two state educational programs that help school districts improve results for English language learners and address disparities in special education.

The funding agreements require that a certain percentage of subcontractors on grant-related projects are awarded to minority- and women-owned business enterprises — or MWBE — to comply with New York state law, the statement said. At NYU, Tappe distributed over $3.5 million of the funding to three certified MWBE subcontractors to provide services related to the grants. 

However, none of the companies worked on the contracts. Instead, according to the district attorney’s office, they acted like “pass-throughs”: Each company took 3 to 6 percent of the invoiced amounts as overhead and sent the remaining $3.25 million to two shell companies she created: High Galaxy Inc. and PCM Group Inc. Tappe also drafted fictional invoices on company letterhead to justify the payments.

Although Tappe used some of the routed funds for NYU payments and employee reimbursements, she kept more than $660,000 for personal expenses, such as renovations to her Connecticut home that included an $80,000 swimming pool. 

“Ms. Tappe strongly regrets her misconduct,” wrote Deborah Colson, Tappe’s lawyer, in an email to the News. “She accepted responsibility for her wrongdoing in open court and will pay the restitution in full prior to sentencing. She looks forward to putting this case behind her.” 

Tappe was confronted by NYU leadership in 2018, before leaving the school. She was hired by Yale in 2019 as the School of Medicine’s operations director; following Tappe’s indictment, Yale initially placed her on leave and later fired her. 

“Yale University terminated Ms. Tappe’s employment after learning of the indictment,” University spokesperson Karen Peart wrote to the News. “Like all Yale employees, she underwent pre-employment screening, including reference and background checks.”

Bragg emphasized that Tappe’s schemes were harmful for the minority groups that grant funding was intended to support.

“Her fraudulent actions not only threatened to affect the quality of education for students with disabilities and multilingual students, but denied our city’s minority and women owned business enterprises a chance to fairly compete for funding,” Bragg said in a press release. 

Tappe was fired from Yale in 2023.

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