Karen Kreeger

A University of Pennsylvania research team has defined a possible new way to fight a disease that is currently treatable only with the most expensive drug available for sale in the United States.

An international team of scientists has traced the origin of Plasmodium vivax, the second-worst malaria parasite of humans, to Africa, according to a study published this week in Nature Communications.

Pulling an “all-nighter” before a big test is practically a rite of passage in college. Usually, it’s no problem: You stay up all night, take the test, and then crash, rapidly catching up on lost sleep. But as we age, sleep patterns change, and our ability to recoup lost sleep diminishes.

All creatures great and small, including fruitflies, need sleep. Researchers have surmised that sleep – in any species -- is necessary for repairing proteins, consolidating memories, and removing wastes from cells. But, really, sleep is still a great mystery.

Substances called adjuvants that enhance the body’s immune response are critical to getting the most out of vaccines. These boosters stimulate the regular production of antibodies -- caused by foreign substances in the body -- toxins, bacteria, foreign blood cells, and the cells of transplanted organs.

If the content of many a situation comedy, not to mention late-night TV advertisements, is to be believed, there’s an epidemic of balding men, and an intense desire to fix their follicular deficiencies.

Klaus Kaestner, PhD, professor of Genetics and postdoctoral fellow Dana Avrahami, PhD, from the Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, published a study this week in the Journal of Clinical Investi

At the heart of brain diseases such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), Alzheimer's disease, and Parkinson's disease is protein misfolding, in which distorted proteins are unable to perform their normal functions. At present, there is no known way to reverse protein misfolding.

A multi-disciplinary team from the University of Pennsylvania has published in Nature Methods a first-of-its-kind way to isolate RNA from live cells in their natural tissue microenvironment without damaging nearby cells. This allows the researchers to analyze how cell-to-cell chemical connections influence individual cell function and overall protein production.  

Red blood cells are the body’s true shape shifters, perhaps the most malleable of all cell types, transforming – among many other forms -- into compressed discs capable of going through capillaries with diameters smaller than the blood cell itself. While studying how blood clots contract John W.