New Jersey Medical School (NJMS)—also known as Rutgers New Jersey Medical School—is a graduate medical school of Rutgers University that has been part of the Rutgers Division of Biomedical and Health Sciences since the 2013 dissolution of the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey. Founded in 1954, NJMS is the oldest school of medicine in New Jersey.
Mentorship is often described as a transformative relationship that opens doors, fosters professional identity formation, and offers psychological safety through trust, guidance, and mutual growth. At its best, mentorship can repair earlier wounds related to authority or parental figures, enabling mentees not only to thrive but eventually step confidently into mentoring roles themselves. Through this reciprocal process, mentorship becomes a critical mechanism for leadership development, resilience, and ethical professional practice. However, mentorship is not universally positive. Malignant mentorship dynamics may emerge subtly, even within otherwise productive relationships, making them difficult to recognize or address. Power differentials, dependency, fear of professional consequences, and unclear boundaries can leave mentees feeling trapped, confused, or silenced. These dynamics are particularly complex when viewed through the lens of intergenerational leadership and intersectional identities, where race, gender, sexuality, disability, and professional hierarchy intersect to shape vulnerability and access to support. This chapter explores the full spectrum of mentorship experiences, including relationships that are harmful, exploitative, or psychologically unsafe by drawing on psychological theory, professional narratives, and applied frameworks. Readers will be better equipped to critically examine mentorship relationships with nuance and clarity. It offers language for identifying harmful patterns; strategies for navigating difficult mentorship dynamics; and tools for fostering ethical, reflective, and inclusive mentoring practices. Ultimately, this work challenges the assumption that all mentorship is inherently beneficial and argues for a more intentional, accountable, and humane approach that protects psychological safety while preserving mentorship’s profound potential for growth and transformation.
This review examines how social determinants of health contribute to inequities in cardiovascular outcomes and evaluates strategies for delivering equity-centered cardiovascular care across clinical, community, and policy settings. Socioeconomic status, education, housing, food security, transportation, and insurance status significantly shape cardiovascular risk and care delivery. Multidisciplinary approaches integrating medical care with social support and community partnerships demonstrate promise in addressing these barriers. The Heart Team model, shared decision making, and quality improvement frameworks align clinical care with patient context. Evidence-based interventions including community-based programs, mobile health services, transportation assistance, and digital health tools improve cardiovascular access and outcomes among underserved populations. Addressing social and structural barriers is essential for reducing preventable cardiovascular morbidity and mortality. Future priorities include standardizing social risk data collection, expanding multidisciplinary care reimbursement, implementing equity-centered trial designs, and developing digital infrastructure supporting integrated care delivery.
Breast cancer susceptibility gene 1 (BRCA1) is a tumor suppressor protein that functions to maintain genomic stability through critical roles in DNA repair, cell-cycle arrest, and transcriptional control. The androgen receptor (AR) is expressed in more than 70% of breast cancers and has been implicated in breast cancer pathogenesis. However, little is known about the role of BRCA1 in AR-mediated cell proliferation in human breast cancer. Here, we report that a high expression of AR in breast cancer patients was associated with shorter overall survival (OS) using a tissue microarray with 149 nonmetastatic breast cancer patient samples. We reveal that overexpression of BRCA1 significantly inhibited expression of AR through activation of SIRT1 in breast cancer cells. Meanwhile, SIRT1 induction or treatment with a SIRT1 agonist, resveratrol, inhibits AR-stimulated proliferation. Importantly, this mechanism is manifested in breast cancer patient samples and TCGA database, which showed that low SIRT1 gene expression in tumor tissues compared with normal adjacent tissues predicts poor prognosis in patients with breast cancer. Taken together, our findings suggest that BRCA1 attenuates AR-stimulated proliferation of breast cancer cells via SIRT1 mediated pathway.
Colorectal cancer(CRC) is the third most commonly diagnosed malignancy with a rising global incidence. CRC shares many risk factors with other malignancies and may occur as a part of hereditary cancer syndromes. This retrospective cohort study aims to evaluate outcomes in patients with CRC and a history of prior malignancy to identify potential implications for personalized management. The National Cancer Database was queried from 2004 to 2022 for patients diagnosed with CRC, who were stratified into two cohorts: those with and without malignancies prior to CRC diagnosis. Propensity score matching was performed to balance sociodemographic characteristics, and logistic regression was used to estimate odds ratios(ORs) for tumor and treatment characteristics. Subsequently, a Cox proportional hazards model was fit to assess the association of having prior malignancies and mortality. A total of 576,076 patients were included, with 288,038 in each cohort. Patients with prior malignancies had significantly lower odds of KRAS mutation(OR = 0.86, 95
Pediatric brain tumors, including high-grade gliomas (HHG), medulloblastomas (MB), and ependymomas (EPN), are a leading cause of death in children. They are often immunologically “cold” with low tumor mutational burden (TMB) and very few tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs), which may limit the role of immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICI). We performed a PRISMA‑guided systematic review of PubMed/MEDLINE, Embase, and Scopus from inception to September 17, 2025, for English-language studies of patients ≤ 21 years with primary CNS tumors treated with PD‑1/PD‑L1 or CTLA‑4 inhibitors. Eligible reports included prospective trials, retrospective series, and observational/case reports with extractable data on efficacy and/or toxicity. Of 479 records identified, 386 unique citations were screened, 127 underwent full‑text review, and 40 met inclusion criteria for qualitative synthesis. Prospective and institutional studies in biomarker-unselected diffuse midline glioma, high-grade glioma, medulloblastoma, and ependymoma showed low objective response rates (generally ≤ 6
