Focus: Hidden - Pennsylvania

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Blocking nuclear gateways that traffic cancer-promoting molecules to nucleus, could offer a new way to target aggressive cancer.

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Sodas, sports drinks, sweetened juices, fast food and grab-and-go vending machine snacks are staples of many American diets, and this fare has become a major contributor to obesity and chronic disease across the nation. In fact, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the added sugars from sugary drinks are directly tied to an increased risk of obesity and type 2 diabetes. Penn Medicine is taking strides to eliminate these foods from its facilities in an effort to ensure that the food its serves aligns with its missions to care for, educate and empower patients who are coping with heart disease, diabetes, and many other illnesses.

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New NCCN Guidelines for gestational trophoblastic neoplasia created to ensure pregnant women with cancer receive life-saving treatment while preserving fertility

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Four Penn Medicine postdoctoral trainees have been awarded three-year fellowships through a newly established program, the Michael Brown Penn-GSK Postdoctoral Fellowship Award Program from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, in partnership with GlaxoSmithKline.

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The Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania has received a $2 million gift from the Blavatnik Family Foundation to establish the Blavatnik Family Fellowship in Biomedical Research in the Penn Biomedical Graduate Studies (BGS) program.

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Checkpoint inhibitor therapies have made metastatic melanoma and other cancers a survivable condition for 20 to 30 percent of treated patients, but clinicians have had very limited ways of knowing which patients will respond. Researchers have uncovered a novel mechanism by which tumors suppress the immune system. Their findings also usher in the possibility that a straightforward blood test could predict and monitor cancer patients’ response to immunotherapy.

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Jorge Henao-Mejia will work to uncover how minute organisms in the gut contribute to obesity and type 2 diabetes, findings which could pave the way from new treatments to reduce the ever-growing number of people diagnosed with these serious medical conditions.

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Wistar received more than $5.5 million in grants and awards from local foundations, and national and international funding agencies to support research, education and training at the Institute.

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An intervention designed to promote healthy growth that taught first-time moms how to respond with age-appropriate responses to their babies’ needs resulted in children having lower body mass indexes (BMIs) when they were three years old.

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An in-depth study of retired football and hockey players—including cognitive, psychological, and brain imaging techniques—finds no increase in the rate of early-onset dementia, reports the Journal of Head Trauma Rehabilitation (JHTR). The official journal of the Brain Injury Association of America, JHTR is published by Wolters Kluwer.

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UPMC Presbyterian Hospital has been designated an Antimicrobial Stewardship Center of Excellence by the Infectious Disease Society of America (IDSA).

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Penn Team Eradicates Hepatitis C in 20 Patients Following Lifesaving Transplants from Infected Donors

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To ensure the continued security and safety of our nation’s nuclear enterprises, the Penn State College of Engineering is formally introducing a nuclear security option in its nuclear engineering master’s program.

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JNCCN—Journal of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network introduces new Executive Editorial Board, reaches new heights for readership and impact rating thanks to expanding content, including new studies, panel insights, and NCCN Guidelines®

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The importance of an inclusive workforce culture in health care is key to advancing scientific inquiry, improving the quality of care, and optimizing patient satisfaction. In fact, diverse student bodies and workforces have been shown to improve everyone’s cultural effectiveness and address inequities in health care delivery. Now, inclusiveness of workplace culture can be measured by a concrete set of six factors, according to a study published today in JAMA Network Open from researchers at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.

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Through a recently awarded Penn State Teaching and Learning with Technology Fellowship, Alan Wagner, assistant professor of aerospace engineering at Penn State, will develop an experimental framework, using immersive social spaces, to investigate how social, artificially intelligent robots in higher education can foster and enforce ethical behavior and academic integrity with students.

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Pain is a frequent problem for children with complex medical conditions – but many of them are unable to communicate their pain verbally. For these children, nurses face a challenging task in assessing and determining the cause of pain, according to a study in the August issue of the American Journal of Nursing. The journal is published in the Lippincott portfolio by Wolters Kluwer.

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A new study using machine learning has identified brain-based dimensions of mental health disorders, an advance towards much-needed biomarkers to more accurately diagnose and treat patients.

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A long-term follow-up study from Australia confirms that hip implants with components made of cross-linked polyethylene (XLPE) substantially lower the risk of revision surgery after total hip replacement, reports a study in the August 1, 2018 issue of The Journal of Bone & Joint Surgery. The journal is published in the Lippincott portfolio in partnership with Wolters Kluwer.

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Elijah Patino is a happy, healthy seven-year-old now, but it took a while to get there. For much of his life, he had a mysterious disease that made it painful to eat and painful to play. A pediatric immunologist resolved this "diagnostic odyssey" by identifying the molecular cause of this autoimmune condition, then crafted a low-dose immunosuppressive regimen to provide a precise treatment.

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This Focus Issue will look at recent advances in the in situ experimentation of plasticity and fracture, especially those that enable the development and design of materials and nanocomposites with enhanced mechanical properties reaching or approaching the extreme limits of materials properties.

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Anyone who has developed a kidney stone will tell you that the pain of passing one is worth an ounce of prevention.

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For specialist nurses on neurocritical care units, accompanying patients for imaging scans and other procedures has a major impact on nurse staffing ratios, reports a study in the Journal of Neuroscience Nursing, official journal of the American Association of Neuroscience Nurses. The journal is published in the Lippincott portfolio by Wolters Kluwer.

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A new drug-delivery technology which uses red blood cells to shuttle nano-scale drug carriers, called RBC-hitchhiking, has been found in animal models to dramatically increase the concentration of drugs ferried precisely to selected organs.

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For patients with Poland syndrome – a rare congenital condition affecting the chest muscle – computer-aided design (CAD) techniques can be used to create custom-made silicone implants for reconstructive surgery of the chest, reports a paper in the August issue of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery®, the official medical journal of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS).

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Three-dimensional image simulation is popular among women planning breast augmentation surgery. But while this evolving technology may enhance communication, it doesn’t improve patient satisfaction with the results of the procedure, reports a paper in the August issue of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery®, the official medical journal of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS).

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Mothers of critically ill infants may not receive necessary breastfeeding support, because their babies may be taken directly to a newborn intensive care unit or to surgery. Lactation expert Dr. Diane Spatz, of Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, presents an alternative model for healthcare providers to care for vulnerable hospitalized infants, separated from their mothers.

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Wolters Kluwer Health announced today it will begin publishing The Journal of the Association of Nurses in AIDS Care from the Association of Nurses in AIDS Care (ANAC). Under the new partnership, Wolters Kluwer will publish the clinical and scientific journal in its Lippincott Portfolio beginning January 2019.

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The word sabbatical could conjure up all sorts of envy in non-academics who may hear the term and think only of “paid time off.” However, this “time away” is anything but “time off.”

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The Philadelphia Pediatric Medical Device Consortium (PPDC) has announced its latest round of seed grants to companies developing medical devices for children. The Consortium, based at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, chose six companies from among 10 finalists in a competition to receive seed grants of up to $50,000.

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The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved the first ever non-surgical treatment for the rare neuroendocrine cancers pheochromocytoma and paraganglioma. The approval was based on a multi-center trial led by researchers in the Abramson Cancer Center of the University of Pennsylvania and was granted to Progenics Pharmaceuticals for AZEDRA (iobenguane I131).

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A common class of drugs used to treat diabetes exerts a powerful check on macrophages by controlling the metabolic fuel they use to generate energy. Keeping macrophages from going overboard on the job may inhibit the onset of obesity and diabetes following tissue inflammation.

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PHILADELPHIA— The United States Congressional Budget Office estimates that 5 percent of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) is spent on medical tests and procedures that do not improve patient outcomes. In an effort to reduce unnecessary testing, procedures and related spending, the federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has named Penn Medicine and two other organizations among a select few health care organizations in the country designated as a “qualified provider-led entity” (QPLE).

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Pairing an online patient dashboard with “nudges” to doctors tripled statin prescribing rates in a clinical trial led by Penn Medicine researchers. The study used two nudges, active choice framing to prompt physicians to make a decision on prescriptions, and peer comparison feedback which provided physicians with information on their performance relative to other physicians.

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Mice fed a fattening diet develop new liver circadian rhythms that impact the way fat is accumulated and simultaneously burned. The team found that as liver fat production increases, surprisingly, so does the body’s ability to burn fat. These opposing physiological processes reach their peak activity each day around 5 p.m., illustrating an unexpected connection between overeating, circadian rhythms, and fat accumulation in the liver.

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Mind-body therapies – biofeedback, mindfulness, yoga, and hypnosis – provide a promising approach to the very common problem of anxiety in adolescents, according to a review in the March issue of The Nurse Practitioner. The journal is published in the Lippincott portfolio by Wolters Kluwer.

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Patients taking opioids for at least three months before spinal fusion surgery in the lower spine are much more likely to continue taking opioids one year after surgery, reports a study in Spine. The journal is published in the Lippincott portfolio by Wolters Kluwer.

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Caregiving resource will bring together decades of ongoing multidisciplinary research.

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Two units of plasma given in a medical helicopter on the way to the hospital could increase the odds of traumatically injured patients with severe bleeding surviving by 10 percent, according to the results of a national clinical trial.

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How do we define and measure worker well-being? A proposed conceptual framework, with implications for future efforts to improve occupational safety and health, is presented in the July issue of Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine.

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A gene linked to 3 to 4 percent of people with Parkinson’s disease could play an important role in most, if not all, people with the disease, according to a new study. The findings suggest that treatments being developed for this small group of people may benefit many more patients than previously thought.

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Penn Medicine has been named #2 on Forbes magazine’s first-ever “America's Best Employers for Women” list, which ranks employers across the nation.

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In the United States, the percentage of children and adolescents with obesity has more than tripled since 1970. Today, approximately one in five school-aged children (ages 6 to 19) is obese.

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While Botox may be most commonly known for its usefulness as a cosmetic anti-aging treatment, what’s not nearly as well-known is that cosmetics were not the original intention of the substance. Dig a little deeper and you might be surprised to find out just how many uses the substance has in other areas of medicine.

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Patients’ perceptions of the hospital they’re being treated in may be improved by the type of artwork hanging in hospital rooms, according to Penn State College of Medicine researchers.

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First Optimizer® Smart investigational device for heart disease implanted in the Philadelphia Area

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John Wherry, PhD, has been appointed the new chair of the department of Systems Pharmacology and Translational Therapeutics at Penn. He is an international leader in the study of T cell exhaustion, which prevents optimal control of infections and can hamper anti-tumor immune responses.