News Releases

Impaired and inefficient muscle tissue regeneration appears to open the door for unwanted bone to form in areas where new muscle should occur after injuries. This discovery opens up the possibility of pursuing new therapies for fibrodysplasia ossificans progressiva and was published in NPJ Regenerative Medicine.

Long-time funding for work at the Penn Center for Musculoskeletal Disorders has been renewed for another five years by the National Institute of Arthritis, Musculoskeletal, and Skin Diseases (NIAMS) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The additional $4 million in funding will continue the center’s investigations into all types of musculoskeletal tissue injury and repair.

An overactive genetic pathway in muscle stem cells was found to shorten the ends of chromosomes, called telomeres, resulting in DNA damage that impedes the normal healing response, according to a new study by researchers in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.

A new biosealant therapy may help to stabilize injuries that cause cartilage to break down, paving the way for a future fix or – even better – begin working right away with new cells to enhance healing, according to a new animal-based study by researchers at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.

There is currently no cure for osteoarthritis, but a group of scientists believe they’ve discovered a method through which a simple knee injection could potentially stop the disease’s effects. These researchers showed that they could target a specific protein pathway in mice, put it into overdrive and halt cartilage degeneration over time. Building on that finding, they were able to show that treating mice with surgery-induced knee cartilage degeneration through the same pathway via the state of the art of nanomedicine could dramatically reduce the cartilage degeneration and knee pain.

By softening a cell’s nucleus so that it can squeeze its way through dense connective tissues, a group of researchers believe they’ve demonstrated a new way to help the body efficiently repair injuries.

Researchers may have found a way to press pause on spinal disc injuries, giving doctors more time to treat them before worse issues develop. The Penn Medicine-led team discovered that cells in the outer region of spinal discs become stressed and kick off a subpar healing process after injuries, which researchers then found can temporarily be blocked with drugs that calm the cells down.

While more light is being shed on the effects that concussions have on player performance, the researchers sought to examine how athletic performance was affected immediately, which has not been studied extensively. The research was published in American Journal of Sports Medicine.