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Staging the plague
Laurel Redding of the School of Veterinary Medicine writes on an easel as members of her table look on

Gathered in Fagin Hall for a daylong disease outbreak symposium, students worked across disciplines to devise strategies for containing a fictionalized infection. Laurel Redding, a School of Veterinary Medicine faculty member and event facilitator, writes up her group’s thoughts during a brainstorming session. 

Staging the plague

Eighty-one students training in a diversity of health professions worked with regional and federal agencies to confront an imagined outbreak scenario centered around bubonic plague in Philadelphia.

Katherine Unger Baillie

Want to reduce emissions? Start in the gut of a cow
Dipti Pitta examining cow feed

Livestock like cattle produce 25 percent of methane emissions in the United States.

Want to reduce emissions? Start in the gut of a cow

As concern about climate change rises, Dipti Pitta of the School of Veterinary Medicine is working to develop innovative strategies to limit greenhouse gas emissions.

Jacob Williamson-Rea

Studying the players in immune regulation
oliver-garden-and-sabina-hlavaty-wearing-latex-gloves-hold-up-a-plate-of-medical-cells-

Dr. Oliver Garden and Sabina Hlavaty, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute/Burroughs Wellcome Fund Medical Research Fellow, view a plate of cultured canine bone marrow cells to compare conditions during an experiment. Photo courtesy of Penn Vet News.

Studying the players in immune regulation

Penn Vet's Oliver Garden Garden's lab is exploring new facets in regulating immune responses.

Katherine Unger Baillie

Multidisciplinary team to develop stem cell-based approaches to restore vision
3-d-image-of-eyeball-anatomy

Multidisciplinary team to develop stem cell-based approaches to restore vision

Gene therapies have had success in treating blindness but can’t save areas of the retina where cells have already died. In a new effort, School of Veterinary Medicine scientists John Wolfe and William Beltran will attempt to develop a stem-cell-based approach that restores vision.

Katherine Unger Baillie

Immune cells involved in triple-negative breast cancer could offer future therapeutic target
Chakrabarti teaser image

Immune cells involved in triple-negative breast cancer could offer future therapeutic target

New research led by Rumela Chakrabarti reveals how immune cells called myeloid-derived immunosuppressor cells contribute to the progression of triple-negative breast cancer, a particularly aggressive cancer. Pairing chemotherapy with a drug that blocks these cells may one day help stem its growth.

Katherine Unger Baillie

Making fossils move to build better robots
Making extinct dinosaurs move to build better robots

Making fossils move to build better robots

Aja Carter, a Ph.D. candidate in paleontology, builds robots based on fossilized animals that crawled out of the sea about 300 million years ago. She’s pioneering a new field that she calls paleo-bio-inspired robotics.

Jacob Williamson-Rea

Seven Penn researchers receive NIH Director Awards
Payne, Aimee and Mason, Nicola

Aimee Payne (left) of Penn Medicine and Nicola Mason of Penn Vet are co-investigators on an NIH Director's Transformative Research Award that will support investigations into the use of immunotherapies to treat an autoimmune disease in pet dogs. Payne and Mason are among seven Penn researchers to win highly competitive NIH Director's awards this year.

Seven Penn researchers receive NIH Director Awards

Seven researchers from the Perelman School of Medicine, School of Veterinary Medicine, and School of Engineering and Applied Science are to receive National Institutes of Health Director Awards, highly competitive grants to support innovative biomedical research.

Penn Today Staff

Ventilating with mixture of helium and oxygen improves outcomes for horses in surgery
Hopster.horse ventilation

The new research shows the benefits of ventilating horses undergoing surgery with a mixture of helium and oxygen. (Image: Courtesy of Klaus Hopster)

Ventilating with mixture of helium and oxygen improves outcomes for horses in surgery

Horses are so large that their weight can cause their lungs to collapse while under anesthesia. In a new study, Klaus Hopster and colleagues at the School of Veterinary Medicine found that ventilating horses with a mixture of helium and oxygen can lead to better pulmonary gas exchange.

Katherine Unger Baillie

Knockdown and replace: A gene therapy twofer to treat blindness
Beltran rhodopsin

Maps reflecting the thickness of a key layer of the retina show how a gene therapy treatment (right panels) protected against severe retinal degeneration.

Knockdown and replace: A gene therapy twofer to treat blindness

More than 150 different mutations in the light-sensing molecule rhodopsin can cause retinitis pigmentosa, characterized by a progressive loss of night and peripheral vision, and a team of researchers have developed a treatment for the condition. Successful results in dogs set the stage for testing in humans.