What Do These Numbers Have in Common: 5,308… 217… 11?

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The 2020 Synapse Publications Report can help you find out. This year our authors published 5,308 works! Of this total, we noted that 217 works were COVID-related. We also expanded our document publication types and now organize works under 11 different formats. The new formats include: Correspondence, Editorial, Guidelines, Journal Article, Miscellaneous, Research Letter, and Review.

Synapse is a public-facing resource and the authoritative bibliographic database of MSK publications, developed and maintained by a team of skilled librarians. While this report reflects the year in review, the Synapse database provides a record of the intellectual output written by MSK researchers, clinicians, nurses, and other healthcare professionals. As of July 2021, Synapse contains over 90,290 entries [references] dating back to 1987.

I hope that by browsing the 2020 Synapse Publications Report, readers will gain a sense of the contributions made by MSK authors to the ever-growing body of scholarly research. If you are curious about our past annual reports, feel free to explore.

Donna Gibson
Director, Library Services



Heart Failure and Cancer, Tissue Specific Cancer Development and More

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  • In a new study, researchers analyzed data from a German health database from over 100,000 patients with heart failure and the same number of people without this condition for ten years to establish cancer incidence in both groups over time. The study found a correlation between heart failure and cancer incidence. 25.7 percent of patients with heart failure developed some form of cancer, compared with 16.2 percent of those who did not have heart failure. The study also provided statistics on cancer types, demonstrating such correlation on a more granular level. Although this type of retrospective research can establish correlation but not causation, it would be prudent for patients with heart failure to get regular cancer screening as a preventive measure. The study was published in ESC Heart Failure.
  • Another team of researchers from Germany conducted a preclinical study on genetic processes underlying pancreatic and biliary tract cancer development. They established that tissue-specific (in this case, bile duct and pancreas epithelium) genetic interplay with an oncogene plays the causative role in the development of different types of cancers. This will help understand different tissue-specific responses to cancer therapy, which is important in the practice of precision medicine. The study was published in Cancer Discovery.
  • Researchers from the Institute for Systems Biology (ISB) and the University of California, Riverside developed a method of identifying fatty acids uptake by a single cell. Fatty acids, along with glucose and amino acids, are known to be a source of energy for cell proliferation, including cancer cell proliferation. But unlike glucose metabolism, the biological mechanism of fatty acids uptake by a cell was not well understood. The researchers developed a chemical approach to “profiling” the fatty acid uptake into the cells in connection to protein signaling in cancer cells. Using a brain cancer model, they gained new insight into the role of fatty acids in cancer development and created a potential for the new therapy to block the tumor growth. The study was published in Journal of the American Chemical Society.
  • Scientists at the Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute (LTRI), part of Sinai Health, classified all cancers into just two categories, “based on the presence or absence of a protein called the Yes-associated protein, or YAP.” This new understanding can lay the foundation for developing different cancer treatment strategies based on whether the cancer is YAPon or YAPoff type. The study was published in Cancer Cell.

Three Questions: Chris Boire, Special Projects Librarian

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For our next Three Questions interview, we spoke with Chris Boire, Special Projects Librarian.

The Boire family dog, Emma.

What areas can you help MSK users with?

Those who’ve been frequenting our monthly ‘Three Questions’ blog series will be familiar with Synapse, MSK’s database of MSK authors and their publications. I work alongside Jeanine McSweeney and Marina Rosenfield, who’ve talked about the database on their own posts – any questions about Synapse or how to use it, I’m happy to help with. On top of that, I also work to ensure research compliance with the MSK Cancer Center Support Grant/Core Grant (P30 CA008748). Any peer-reviewed publication by MSK staff needs to meet specific criteria to ensure compliance. If you’ve published a paper at MSK and have questions about how it fits into this process, let me know.

What projects have been working on recently?

Summertime means the core grant compliance review’s in full swing! Working alongside Library Director Donna Gibson, and with help from the database the Synapse team and I maintain, I’m reviewing the research published at MSK over the past few years to ensure our output is meeting required criteria. I review every paper and its bibliographic data over on PubMed to make sure it’s got all the information we need. For whatever is missing, we work with the paper’s authors and help them figure out what they need to do and who to contact to ensure their papers are compliant.

If you could travel anywhere in the world, where would you go?

Years ago, I was able to briefly visit a beautiful string of towns along the Italian coast called Cinque Terre – I’d love to visit there again. On top of that, I’ve always wanted to visit Japan and Iceland.