A new treatment using leukemia patients’ own infection-fighting cells appears to protect them from infections and cancer recurrence following treatment with fludarabine-based chemotherapy, according to new research from the Perelma…
Scientists have found the ‘key’ that HIV uses to enter our cells’ nuclei, allowing it to disable the immune system and cause AIDS The finding, published today in the open access journal PLoS Pathogens, provides a potential new target for anti-AIDS drug…
PHILADELPHIA – In a study published in the journal Developmental Cell, Sarah Millar PhD, professor of Dermatology and Cell & Developmental Biology at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, and colleagues demonstrate that a pair of …
CHICAGO — CPR quality is worse during in-hospital cardiac arrests occurring overnight than those that happen during the day, according to a new University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine study that will be presented at the American Heart Associat…
Gone are the days when a doctor’s only way of helping patients is by treating the disease after symptoms have started. Instead, a new approach to medicine, called “Desktop Medicine” is emerging, in which the emphasis shifts from diagnosing disease…
PHILADELPHIA – Taking a cue from the world of business-performance experts and baseball talent scouts, Penn Medicine translational medicine researchers are among the first to find a way to measure the productivity of collaborations in a young,…
(PHILADELPHIA) — Despite the fact that an estimated 25 million patients per year in the U.S. undergo surgeries using general anesthesia, scientists have only been able to hypothesize exactly how anesthetics interact with the central nervous system…
PHILADELPHIA – Male infertility is a common medical problem, affecting millions of men in the United States annually. Its causes include an inability to make productive sperm. Now, using yeast as a model organism, researchers at the University of Pe…
Those who believe they can function well on six or fewer hours of sleep every night may be accumulating a “sleep debt” that cuts into their normal cognitive abilities, according to research conducted at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. What’s more, the research indicates, those people may be too sleep-deprived to know it. The study, published in the March 15 issue of the journal Sleep, found that chronically sleep-deprived individuals reported feeling “only slightly sleepy” even when their performance was at its worst during standard psychological testing. The results provide scientific insight into the daily challenges that confront military personnel, residents and on-call doctors and surgeons, shift workers, parents of young children, and others who routinely get fewer than six hours of sleep each night.
For antibiotics, the best way to beat bacterial defenses may be to avoid them altogether. Researchers at University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine have discovered that Cecropin A, a member of a family of antibiotic proteins produced by insects, may kill bacteria and avoid resistance by entering bacterial cells and taking control of their genetic machinery.
While most antibiotics kill bacteria by attacking critical enzyme systems, Cecropin A somehow slips inside the bacteria and turns specific genes on and off. The findings challenge conventional thinking on how these antibiotics function, and may aid in turning antimicrobial peptides like Cecropin A into therapeutic agents.
While type 1 Neurofibromatosis (NF1) is primarily known to cause tumors of the nervous system, scientists were puzzled as to why patients with NF1 are also prone to cardiovascular problems such as hypertension and congenital heart disease. Researchers from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine have solved this particular part of the puzzle by showing how the Nf1 gene – which is mutated in those suffering from Neurofibromatosis – is also essential in endothelial cells, the cells that make up blood vessels.
Rearrangements of the mixed lineage leukemia gene, MLL, are associated with aggressive leukemias in both children and adults. Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine have found that one portion of the MLL protein is an enzyme that “edits” the so-called histone code, a series of modifications to proteins associated with DNA that influence how and when certain genes are turned on and off. Their findings are presented in the November issue of Molecular Cell.