Important AnnouncementIt is with a great sense of accomplishment and some sadness that we announce the Board of Trustees has voted to close AMDeC’s doors.   This marks the end of an initiative that was critical to sustaining the vibrancy of the biomedical research community in New York. Fifteen years ago, AMDeC was founded to facilitate and encourage collaboration among the major medical research institutions in the NY region.  We are proud to say that we have achieved this – and much more.    Our record of bringing together the brightest minds to achieve what was once considered impossible is stellar.  Among our many programs and accomplishments, we would like to recall several that made a real difference:  1999New York Cancer Project (NYCP)This groundbreaking study of 18,000+ ethnically diverse NYC residents allowed researchers to better understand how factors such as environment, diet, family history, and genetics affect the development of cancer; each volunteer participated in a lengthy on-on-one interview and donated blood samples for gDNA samples, which are still being leveraged for new research todayNew York Early Lung Cancer Action Program (NY-ELCAP)AMDeC brought together researchers from 11 affiliated institutions to use state-of-the-art CT screenings to study more than 6,000 smokers. The project determined that annual CT screening is an effective diagnostic tool for detecting early-stage lung cancer in smokers; among the cases diagnosed with lung cancers, 98% of cancers were screen detected2001
Stem Cell Advocacy
Prior to any state-enacted stem cell legislation, AMDeC advocated for and won state support for 
stem cell research; this high-profile effort resulted in New York’s Empire State Stem Cell Program 
(NYSTEM) and $600 million in support
Five-Year Plan for Genomics
AMDeC envisioned a five-year plan to assemble the building blocks for a world-class genomics 
center that could be accessed by all research institutions.  The plan included such elements as 
the Bioinformatics Core and Microarray Resource Center that are described below.
BioInformatics Core
Housed at Columbia University’s Genome Center, this Core facilitated the integration of 
bioinformatics and computational biology into biomedical research at AMDeC-affiliated 
institutions and extended crucial computational resources that would otherwise be unavailable 
to large portions of the research community
Post-9/11
Northeast Biodefense Center
AMDeC, through its Center on Bioterrorism, unified nearly 30 pre-eminent biomedical research 
institutions into a single grant proposal to go after a coveted NIH regional biodefense grant 
– which they won; the grant was for more than $9 million per year, and the funds have been 
leveraged into several hundred scholarly publications, breakthroughs in infectious disease 
research on everything from influenza to AIDS, and increased funding
2002
Microarray Resource Center (MRC)
Managed by 17 AMDeC institutions, the MRC supports scientists wh