Weill Cornell Awards Depression Research Grant
Assistant professor Revathy Chottekalapanda won a $50,000 Ritu Banga Impact in Healthcare Research Award for work on patient-specific depression models.
Updated on Nov. 5, 2026 in Autism
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Weill Cornell Medicine awarded Revathy Chottekalapanda a $50,000 Ritu Banga Impact in Healthcare Research Award, with three other investigators also receiving the honor. The awards are endowed through a $5 million gift from Ritu Banga and Ajay Banga.
Why it matters
Antidepressant medications do not work for everyone, making alternative research approaches important for patients with depression. The funded project aims to better understand individual differences in treatment response.
The award carries a $50,000 stipend funded from a $5 million endowment established by Ritu Banga and Ajay Banga. The source does not report outcomes or timelines for the funded depression research.
The players
Revathy Chottekalapanda
An assistant professor of neuroscience in psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medicine who earned degrees from Bangalore and Mysore universities in India and a PhD from the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry in Germany.
Weill Cornell Medicine
A medical school and research institution in New York City that awarded the Ritu Banga Impact in Healthcare Research Awards.
The details
Chottekalapanda's project, titled "Patient-Specific Cellular Models of Depression and Treatment Response," uses blood samples donated by people with depression to generate stem cells. Those stem cells are converted into neurons that investigators study in a laboratory setting.
Timeline
The award article was published November 5, 2026.
Health Landscape
The Ritu Banga Impact in Healthcare Research Awards, endowed by a $5 million gift, fund individual investigators at Weill Cornell Medicine. This project addresses the limits of current antidepressant treatments, which do not work for everyone.
Depression patients who do not respond to standard antidepressants may eventually benefit if this research identifies individualized treatment approaches. The study is at an early laboratory stage, so no near-term changes to treatment are reported.
The takeaway
Because antidepressants do not work for everyone, research using each patient's own cells may help explain why treatment responses differ. Readers interested in this work can follow future updates from the research institution.
Further reading
Explore more on Autism coverage for New York City.
Source note: This article includes information reported by The American Bazaar.
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