Some cancer cells refuse to die, even in the face of powerful cellular immunotherapies like CAR T cell therapy, and new research is shedding light on why.
While it’s known that weight “self-stigma” is associated with poor mental and physical health, little is known about how to help people combat it. Researchers show that people who received a new stigma-reduction intervention, along with standard behavioral weight loss treatment, devalued themselves less due to their weight compared to participants who only received the treatment.
Cancer patients may one day be able to get their entire course of radiation therapy in less than a second rather than coming in for treatment over the course of several weeks, and researchers in the Abramson Cancer Center of the University of Pennsylvania have taken the first steps toward making it a reality
A new Penn Medicine study puts researchers within closer reach of vaccines that can protect infants against infections by overcoming a mother’s antibodies, which are known to shut down immune defenses initiated by conventional vaccines. That hurdle largely explains why vaccinations for infectious diseases like influenza and measles not given until six to 12 months of age. Findings from the preclinical study were published online today in Science Translational Medicine.
Researchers from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania applied tools from network science to identify how anatomical connections in the brain develop to support neural activity underlying executive function.
People living in predominately Hispanic neighborhoods are less likely to receive CPR from a bystander following an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest compared to people living in non-Hispanic neighborhoods, researchers from Penn Medicine and the Duke University of School of Medicine reported in the journal Circulation. This same group also had a lower likelihood of survival.
Direct-to-consumer hormone-based “fertility testing” for women is viewed by consumers as both an alternative, empowering tool for family planning, and a confusing and misleading one, according to the results of a new study from Penn Medicine. Findings from the small, first-of-its-kind ethnographic study reinforce the need for consumer education around the purpose and accuracy of the tests, which have seen increasing interest in recent years due to the low cost and widespread availability. The study was published in the journal of Social Science and Medicine.
Closing of local automotive assembly plants may lead to increases in deaths from opioid overdose, according to a study led by researchers at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and the Massachusetts General Hospital. The findings highlight fading economic opportunity as a driving factor in the ongoing national opioid epidemic, and build on previous research that links declining participation in the labor force to increased opioid use in the U.S. The findings are published today in JAMA Internal Medicine.
Lab-grown brain organoids developed from a patient’s own glioblastoma, the most aggressive and common form of brain cancer, may hold the answers on how to best treat it. A new study in Cell from researchers at Penn Medicine showed how glioblastoma organoids could serve as effective models to rapidly test personalized treatment strategies.
Proton therapy leads to significantly lower risk of side effects severe enough to lead to unplanned hospitalizations for cancer patients when compared with traditional radiation, while cure rates between the two groups are almost identical
MRI and an emerging field of medicine called radiomics could help to characterize the heterogeneity of cancer cells within a tumor and allow for a better understanding of the causes and progression of a person’s individual disease, according to a Penn Medicine study.
Patients with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) or acute myeloid leukemia (AML) who are treated with anthracyclines are at a heightened risk of heart failure—most often within one year of exposure to the chemotherapy treatment.
An experimental, off-the-shelf immunotherapy that combines a targeted antibody and chemotherapy can lead to potentially durable responses in multiple myeloma patients whose disease has relapsed or is resistant to other standard therapies
Researchers at Penn Medicine created a new mouse model that allows investigators to closely track the defects in sperm from the early stages of sperm development through fertilization and on. The model can lead to a better understanding of not only infertility in men—and ways to potentially reverse it.
A genetic variant in the gene transthyretin (TTR) is a more significant cause of heart failure than previously believed. The study also revealed that a disease caused by this genetic variant, called hereditary transthyretin amyloid cardiomyopathy, is significantly underdiagnosed.
The antibiotic vancomycin alters the gut microbiome in a way that can help prime the immune system to more effectively attack tumor cells after radiation therapy
A new, experimental immunotherapy can put patients with B-cell non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL) that is resistant to or has come back after multiple other therapies, including CAR T therapy, into remission.
Jeff Krieger didn’t ride off into the sunset. Even though he was finishing up his final radiation treatment for prostate cancer, the 64-year-old didn’t have anything so cliché on his mind.
Soft tissue sarcoma cells stop a key metabolic process which allows them to multiply and spread, and so restarting that process could leave these cancers vulnerable to a variety of treatments
Communities in the United States that experienced the most economic distress in the wake of the Great Recession saw a significant increase in death rates from heart disease and strokes among middle-aged people, according to a new multi-institution study led by researchers at Penn Medicine.
Women who are diagnosed with peripartum cardiomyopathy (PPCM) during late pregnancy or within a month following delivery are more likely to experience restored cardiac function and improved outcomes compared to those who are diagnosed later in the postpartum period.
By nudging doctors to consider a screening for breast or colorectal cancer, order rates jumped significantly, but patient completion rates didn’t change
Heliobacter pylori infection, quite common around the world, is linked to gastric cancer. Now, a Penn study shows that successfully wiping out the infection lowers the cancer risk.
Taller people have an increased risk of developing atrial fibrillation, according to a new Penn Medicine study. The research is the among the first to demonstrate that height may be a causal—not correlated—risk factor for AFib.
Researchers discovered that a protein called CoRest, a neural repressor that is also found in humans, plays a central role in determining the social behavior of ants. The study also revealed that worker ants called Majors can be reprogrammed to perform the foraging role—generally reserved for their sisters.
Genetically editing a cancer patient’s immune cells using CRISPR/Cas9 technology, then infusing those cells back into the patient appears safe and feasible based on early data from the first-ever clinical trial to test the approach in humans in the United States.
Researchers genetically engineered CAR T cells with molecular tags, which they were able to monitor in an animal model using position emission tomography (PET) imaging.
A blood test that measures the amount of cell-free DNA (cfDNA) in the bloodstream – called a liquid biopsy – correlates with how patients will progress after they are diagnosed with glioblastoma (GBM), the deadliest and most common primary brain tumor in adults
To end the HIV epidemic in the US, the use of behavioral and social science research—combined with biomedical strategies—is essential, according to a series of new papers in JAIDS. The 15 article supplement was co-edited by two faculty members in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.
A new analysis challenges the longstanding notion that tuberculous infection is a life-long infection that could strike at any time and cause tuberculosis
An international team of experts led by researchers in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and University of Glasgow has been awarded a $9.7 million, five-year grant from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) and National Institute for Aging (NIA) to establish CONNECT-TBI—a program spanning 12 institutions which will study traumatic brain injury (TBI) and related neurodegenerative diseases.
A new study, led by researchers at Penn Medicine, revealed a surprising pathway that shows alcohol byproducts travel to the brain to promote addiction memory. The findings are published in Nature.
The 2018 federal Right to Try Act allows patients with a life-threatening illness to be treated with drugs that have not yet been approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Many in the oncology community say Right to Try strips away important regulatory protections and view the move as a risky step bound to create ethical dilemmas for physicians whose goal is to guide patients toward safe and appropriate treatment decisions. Oncology is one field at the forefront of requests for unapproved drugs. An interdisciplinary team of bioethicists, oncologists, and lawyers from Penn Medicine and other institutions penned a commentary published online this week in the Journal of Clinical Oncology to offer recommendations to help oncologists navigate this new “Right to Try” world, while maintaining their ethical obligations to patients.
Six faculty members from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania have been elected to the National Academy of Medicine (NAM), one of the nation's highest honors in biomedicine.
Patients with a high risk of dying after surgery, including those with multiple chronic diseases, benefit from undergoing general or vascular procedures at a major teaching hospital as opposed to a non-teaching hospital, according to a study from researchers at Penn Medicine and CHOP.
As part of an effort to improve long-term outcomes, a national team led by a researcher at Penn Medicine has launched a study--funded by a $9.8 million grant from the NIH--to better understand clinical and biological processes that occur after transplant and lead to the development of these complications.
Researchers at Penn Medicine discovered that a protein called ANT is critical for a quality control process called mitophagy—which helps to ensure the integrity of the mitochondria network by removing damaged mitochondria—and found that ANT mutations that lead to a defective quality control system cause heart disease
Women who are health policy or health services researchers face a significant disparity in social media influence compared to their male peers, according to a new study from researchers in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. Although the average number of tweets among all researchers tend to be consistent, women trail behind men in follower counts, regardless of how active they are on Twitter. The findings, which hold implications for larger questions around gender disparities in academic medicine, are published today in JAMA Internal Medicine.
The total amount of opioids dispensed per new opioid prescription decreased by 22 percent in Penn Medicine outpatient practices in New Jersey after the state passed a law limiting prescriptions to a five-day supply for new opioid prescriptions. Penn Medicine implemented an electronic health record (EMR) alert, or “nudge,” to notify clinicians if that limit had been reached. The study, published online today in the Journal of General Internal Medicine, is one of the first evaluations of a state law’s impact on prescribing outcomes, and is the first report of an EMR being used to make compliance with prescribing limits easier. Importantly, after the prescribing limit and alert went into effect there was no evidence to suggest pain control worsened.
As tumor cells multiply, they often spawn tens of thousands of genetic mutations. Figuring out which ones are the most promising to target with immunotherapy is like finding a few needles in a haystack. Now a new model hand-picks those needles so they can be leveraged in more effective, customized cancer vaccines.
A gene therapy being developed at Penn Medicine to treat Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) successfully and safely stopped the severe muscle deterioration associated with the rare, genetic disease in both small and large animal models, according to a first-of-its-kind study.