News Releases

A new study from Penn Medicine, published online in Cell, demonstrates that RN7SL1, a naturally occurring RNA, can activate the body’s own natural T cells to seek out the cancer cells that have escaped recognition by CAR T cells.

New research has uncovered a precision medicine test using blood proteins to identify a novel patient subgroup of idiopathic multicentric Castleman disease (iMCD), a rare blood disorder, who are more likely to respond to siltuximab, the only FDA approved treatment for the disease.

When people set their own exercise goals – and then pursue them immediately – it’s more likely to result in lasting positive changes, according to a new study at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.

Three start-up companies will be the first to receive investment from the Fund for Health, a joint partnership between Penn Medicine and the Wharton Social Impact Initiative of the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School that seeks to invest in early-stage businesses striving to strengthen the social determinants of health of economically disadvantaged Philadelphians.

For their landmark research that set a foundation for the mRNA SARS-CoV-2 vaccines, Drew Weissman, MD, PhD, the Roberts Family Professor of Vaccine Research, and Katalin Karikó, PhD, an adjunct professor of Neurosurgery at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and a senior vice president at BioNTech, have been selected to receive the 2021 Albany Prize.

For the first time, Penn Medicine researchers showed how restoring levels of the protein DAXX and a large group of similar proteins prevents the misfolding of the rogue proteins known to drive Alzheimer’s and other neurodegenerative diseases, as well as certain mutations that contribute to cancers.

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.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has given the first full approval to a COVID-19 mRNA vaccine, which uses modified mRNA technology invented and developed by scientists in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, whose years of research in mRNA science laid a critical piece of the foundation for the largest global vaccination campaign in history.

A CRISPR screening tool identified a new therapeutic target to treat acute myeloid leukemia (AML) that has the potential to leave patients with fewer side effects than current approaches, according to a new study from Penn Medicine published online in Molecular Cell.

Too many “exhausted” T cells left in the wake of aggressive chemotherapy regimens for patients with advanced chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) make it more challenging for chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cell therapy to do its job. Now, a new study from researchers in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania shows how to overcome this type of resistance and reinvigorate these T cells with an experimental small molecule inhibitor.