Latest News

• share
• favorite_border

A new imaging device at UT Southwestern is making complex aortic repairs safer for patients and operating room staff by dramatically reducing their exposure to radiation. The device, known as Fiber Optic RealShape (FORS) and manufactured by Philips, uses light to visualize blood vessels, nearly eliminating the need for X-rays typically used during minimally invasive vascular procedures.

• share
• favorite_border

A team led by UT Southwestern researchers has identified how SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, builds a structure called the RNA cap that’s critical for successful viral replication. The finding, published in Nature, could lead to new strategies to attack COVID-19, which has sickened nearly 600 million and killed more than 6 million worldwide thus far.

• share
• favorite_border

UT Southwestern researchers have identified a molecular pathway responsible for the spread of glioblastoma to surrounding tissue in the brain, as well as an existing drug that curbed tumor growth in animal models. The findings, published in Nature Cell Biology, have led to a clinical trial that could offer new hope to patients with glioblastoma, the most common form of brain cancer in adults that kills hundreds of thousands of people worldwide each year.

• share
• favorite_border

UT Southwestern will lead a multisite initiative funded by the National Cancer Institute (NCI) to identify biomarkers to improve risk assessment and early detection of hepatocellular cancer (HCC), the most common form of liver cancer, among patients with cirrhosis.

• share
• favorite_border

Over the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, almost 30% of patients with obesity gained more than 5% of their body weight, and 1 in 7 gained more than 10%. While diet and exercise habits were factors, people with the highest levels of stress, anxiety, and depression reported the most weight gain, UT Southwestern researchers reported in the journal Obesity.

• share
• favorite_border

Newly developed artificial intelligence (AI) programs accurately predicted the role of DNA’s regulatory elements and three-dimensional (3D) structure based solely on its raw sequence, according to two recent studies in Nature Genetics. These tools could eventually shed new light on how genetic mutations lead to disease and could lead to new understanding of how genetic sequence influences the spatial organization and function of chromosomal DNA in the nucleus, said study author Jian Zhou, Ph.D., Assistant Professor in the Lyda Hill Department of Bioinformatics at UTSW.

• share
• favorite_border

A clinical trial is only as powerful as its participants. For years, researchers have struggled to fill clinical trials and enroll sufficiently diverse groups of patients for results to reflect the broader population, in part because of stringent guidelines on who can participate.

• share
• favorite_border

More than 225,000 tweets with the hashtags #scamdemic and #plandemic led to an “infodemic” of misinformation and disinformation on Twitter during the first year of the pandemic, according to a study by UT Southwestern researchers published in PLOS ONE.

• share
• favorite_border

A research team at UT Southwestern Medical Center has been approved for a five-year, $7 million funding award from the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI). The funding will support multisite clinical research on hypothermia therapy, a cooling treatment that aims to help protect the brains of babies deprived of oxygen at birth.

• share
• favorite_border

Leveraging its broad expertise in biomedical informatics, data sciences, and clinical sciences, UT Southwestern Medical Center is aggressively expanding its involvement in clinical informatics, which aims to harness the power of big data to improve patient care and public health.

• share
• favorite_border

UT Southwestern Medical Center is the No. 1 hospital in Dallas-Fort Worth – the nation’s fourth-largest metro area – for the sixth consecutive year and ranks among the top hospitals nationally in nine specialties ranging from brain to heart to cancer care, according to U.S. News & World Report’s annual Best Hospitals list released today. Five specialties rank among the nation’s top 25.

• share
• favorite_border

UT Southwestern Medical Center has been selected as the nation’s first academic medical center to participate in the American Chemical Society (ACS) Bridge program, designed to increase the number of Black, Latino, and Indigenous students earning doctorates in chemistry.

• share
• favorite_border

Pregnant women with active rheumatic disease carry a higher risk of adverse outcomes than the general population including hypertension, preeclampsia, higher cesarean section rate, small for gestational aged infants, preterm delivery, and fetal loss. To decrease the risk of these complications, rheumatic disease should be under control before conception with medications that are safe to use during pregnancy.

• share
• favorite_border

A team led by UT Southwestern Medical Center cardiologist Ambarish Pandey, M.D., was awarded the grand prize in the American Heart Association Heart Failure Data Challenge hosted by the American Heart Association and the Association of Black Cardiologists. The six-month data challenge asked researchers to test the relationships between heart failure and health disparities, social determinants of health, and structural determinants of health.

• share
• favorite_border

Summertime trips to lakes or pools to escape the heat can sometimes lead to ear infections caused by excess moisture in the ear canal. Hongzhao Ji, M.D., Assistant Professor of Otolaryngology – Head and Neck Surgery at UT Southwestern, offers information on swimmer’s ear, how to treat it, and how to prevent it.

• share
• favorite_border

Reuben Arasaratnam, M.D., M.P.H., Assistant Professor of Internal Medicine at UT Southwestern, has been named one of 11 2022 Scholars in Diagnostic Excellence by the National Academy of Medicine (NAM). The award, which comes with a flexible research grant, mentorship, and learning and professional networking opportunities, will help advance his work on correcting penicillin allergy misdiagnoses.

• share
• favorite_border

Triptans, a commonly prescribed class of migraine drugs, may also be useful in treating obesity, a new study by scientists at UT Southwestern suggests. In studies on obese mice, a daily dose of a triptan led animals to eat less food and lose weight over the course of a month, the team reported in the Journal of Experimental Medicine.

• share
• favorite_border

Using UT Southwestern’s Cryo-Electron Microscopy Facility, researchers for the first time have captured images of an autoantibody bound to a nerve cell surface receptor, revealing the physical mechanism behind a neurological autoimmune disease. The findings, published in Cell, could lead to new ways to diagnose and treat autoimmune conditions, the study authors said.

• share
• favorite_border

UT Southwestern is joining with medical centers around the nation to apply advanced sequencing to pediatric brain tumors as part of the National Cancer Institute’s new Molecular Characterization Initiative, a subset of the Cancer Moonshot Childhood Cancer Initiative.

• share
• favorite_border

Swallowing fluoroscopy is the most common diagnostic test for patients with swallowing problems caused by conditions such as stroke, head and neck cancer, neurodegenerative disease, or prolonged intubation. Despite widespread use, there has been no standard practice to guide its use in the United States.

• share
• favorite_border

Interstitial pneumonia with autoimmune features (IPAF) is a disease with many possible causes and no standard of care, making it particularly difficult to treat. While immunosuppressant drugs are primarily prescribed, they don’t work for all patients.

• share
• favorite_border

A few years ago, American Heart Association leaders realized something. While two national committees regarding quality of care for heart disease and stroke patients each served a unique purpose, there also was some overlap. That wasn't a problem – it was an opportunity.

• share
• favorite_border

Using artificial intelligence, UT Southwestern researchers have discovered a new family of sensing genes in enteric bacteria that are linked by structure and probably function, but not genetic sequence. The findings, published in PNAS, offer a new way of identifying the role of genes in unrelated species and could lead to new ways to fight intestinal bacterial infections.

• share
• favorite_border

In just a few hours, UT Southwestern scientists can tell which variant has infected a COVID-19 patient – a critical task that can potentially influence treatment decisions but takes days or weeks at most medical centers.

• share
• favorite_border

As they grow, solid tumors surround themselves with a thick, hard-to-penetrate wall of molecular defenses. Getting drugs past that barricade is notoriously difficult. Now, scientists at UT Southwestern have developed nanoparticles that can break down the physical barriers around tumors to reach cancer cells. Once inside, the nanoparticles release their payload: a gene editing system that alters DNA inside the tumor, blocking its growth and activating the immune system.

• share
• favorite_border

An estimated one-quarter of adults in the U.S. have nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), an excess of fat in liver cells that can cause chronic inflammation and liver damage, increasing the risk of liver cancer. Now, UT Southwestern researchers have developed a simple blood test to predict which NAFLD patients are most likely to develop liver cancer.

• share
• favorite_border

Four out of five Americans 65 and older want to stay in their homes as they age, according to a recent Associated Press poll. But deciding how long an elderly relative should live alone and when they should move to an environment with more support – such as assisted living or a nursing home – can be difficult.

• share
• favorite_border

A collaborative study from UT Southwestern scientists has identified a new function for a protein called TAO2 that appears to be key to inhibiting replication of the influenza virus, which sickens millions of individuals worldwide each year and kills hundreds of thousands. The findings were published in PNAS.

• share
• favorite_border

T Southwestern researchers Zhijian “James” Chen, Ph.D., and Sihan Wu, Ph.D., are part of a team that has been awarded a Cancer Grand Challenges grant, a unique award that aims to solve some of cancer’s toughest problems by bringing together global teams with diverse areas of expertise.

• share
• favorite_border

Individuals should weigh their own personal health and risk levels in deciding when to receive a second booster of the COVID-19 vaccine, UT Southwestern infectious diseases experts advise.

• share
• favorite_border

New research from UT Southwestern suggests that RNA exosomes – the cellular machines that degrade old molecules of RNA – play a key role in the development of B cells, which are critical to the immune system’s ability to protect against infection. The findings, published in Science Immunology, explain why patients with rare mutations in a gene that codes for this machinery are often immunodeficient and could offer new approaches to treat autoimmune diseases.

• share
• favorite_border

A student group at UT Southwestern Medical School has been named the 2022 Chapter of the Year by the Texas Medical Association Medical Student Section.

• share
• favorite_border

Fifteen scientists in the Harold C. Simmons Comprehensive Cancer Center at UT Southwestern received more than $17 million in research funds in the latest round of grants awarded by the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas (CPRIT). The grants will be used to address scientific questions covering a wide range of cancer types and topics.

• share
• favorite_border

Researchers at UT Southwestern have developed a first-of-its-kind ultrasound-guided cancer immunotherapy platform that delivers immune-stimulating agents to cells for the development of systemic anti-tumor immunity. The technology, termed Microbubble-assisted Ultrasound-guided Immunotherapy of Cancer (MUSIC), was described in a study published in Nature Nanotechnology.

• share
• favorite_border

A compound synthesized by a team led by UT Southwestern scientists kills a range of hard-to-treat cancer types by targeting a previously unexploited vulnerability, a new study reports. The findings, published in Nature Cancer, could eventually lead to new drugs to fight these cancers, which currently have few effective treatments.

• share
• favorite_border

Protein complexes that play a critical role in launching an immune response assemble in droplets that form within the liquid environment in cells much like oil droplets in water, UT Southwestern scientists report in a new study. The findings, published in Molecular Cell, could lead to new interventions to regulate immunity in individuals with overactive or underactive immune responses.

• share
• favorite_border

The rapid adoption of telemedicine and increased use of continuous glucose monitoring helped to attenuate the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on children with Type 1 diabetes, according to a new study from UT Southwestern researchers.

• share
• favorite_border

With summer approaching and temperatures on the rise, it’s important to protect not just your skin but also your eyes from the sun’s rays.

• share
• favorite_border

When Vickie Bell-Percival was offered the opportunity to have a nodule on her thyroid treated with a new nonsurgical technique called radiofrequency ablation (RFA), she didn’t hesitate.

• share
• favorite_border

A multicenter study performed by a large international consortium that includes UT Southwestern has outlined a set of risk factors and outcomes for patients with autoimmune hepatitis (AIH) that recurs after liver transplantation. The findings, published in the Journal of Hepatology, represent a first step toward better managing and potentially preventing this uncommon condition.

• share
• favorite_border

UT Southwestern researchers have discovered a molecular pathway that allows cells to sense when their lipid supplies become depleted, prompting a flurry of activity that prevents starvation. The findings, reported in Nature, might someday lead to new ways to combat metabolic disorders and a variety of other health conditions.

• share
• favorite_border

For three decades, scientists have debated the underlying cause of Gulf War illness (GWI), a collection of unexplained and chronic symptoms affecting veterans of the Persian Gulf War. Now researchers led by Robert Haley, M.D., Professor of Internal Medicine and Director of the Division of Epidemiology at UT Southwestern, have solved the mystery, showing through a detailed genetic study that the nerve gas sarin was largely responsible for the syndrome.

• share
• favorite_border

A new study in mice led by neuroscientists at UT Southwestern’s Peter O’Donnell Jr. Brain Institute shows that it’s not just calories that count.

• share
• favorite_border

Scar-like cells that make up a sizable portion of malignant pancreatic tumors and shield these cancers from immune attack are derived from mesothelial cells that line tissues and organs, a new study led by UT Southwestern researchers suggests. The findings, published in Cancer Cell, could offer a new strategy to fight pancreatic cancer, a deadly disease for which no truly effective treatments exist.

• share
• favorite_border

The findings, published in The Laryngoscope, show that only 1 in 7 subsequently needed surgery for injuries that weren’t resolved with vocal therapy and other conservative management. Researchers determined which vocal injuries were most common by sex, age, training, and professional/amateur status, and what kinds of treatment these patients subsequently required.

• share
• favorite_border

The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) today elected UT Southwestern scientist Jonathan Cohen, Ph.D., into its membership, one of the highest honors for American scientists. Dr. Cohen, Professor of Internal Medicine in the Center for Human Nutrition and the Eugene McDermott Center for Human Growth and Development at UT Southwestern, was elected by his peers in recognition of distinguished and continuing achievements in original research. His research centers on identifying genes that play major roles in the metabolism of cholesterol and triglycerides and elucidating the biological roles of their protein products.

• share
• favorite_border

For years, women recovering from cesarean section (C-section) deliveries have been given devices that let them, with a button, control the flow of opioid painkillers into their IV line. But as researchers and policymakers push to curb the use of opioids, clinicians are developing new strategies for treating pain after C-sections.

• share
• favorite_border

UT Southwestern Medical Center is ranked as the top health care employer for diversity in the U.S. and among the top 20 across all industries, according to America’s Best Employers for Diversity 2022 list compiled by Forbes and Statista. UT Southwestern is the only health care institution listed among the top 20 employers nationally.

• share
• favorite_border

Women who were pregnant during the recent Omicron surge were diagnosed with COVID-19 at a much higher rate than during previous phases of the pandemic, but were less likely to develop severe illness, a study by UT Southwestern and Parkland Health scientists found. The research, reported in JAMA, is the first published evidence documenting how the boom in COVID-19 cases late last year and early this year impacted the health of pregnant women.

• share
• favorite_border

UT Southwestern Medical Center is among the Top Producing Institutions of 2021-2022 Fulbright Students in the U.S., and one of the top producers of U.S. Fulbright students among 4-year, special-focus institutions.