Steve Graff

Researchers from the Perelman School of Medicine and the Penn Center for AIDS Research (CFAR) have been awarded $7.5 million over five years from the National Institutes of Health to initiate a multi-project HIV study investigating a new gene therapy approach to render immune cells of HIV positive patients resistant to the virus.

For more than 100 years, exposing students to basic and clinical research has been an essential component of a medical school education in the United States. However, today, new models of medical education in which research plays a minimal role are likely to create a two-tiered system of education, decrease the physician-scientist pipeline and diminish the application of scientific advances to patient care.

Researchers from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and the Penn Center for AIDS Research (CFAR) are among the 2015 recipients of the prestigious Clinical Research Achievement Award for their personalized gene therapy work in HIV.

The PD-1 inhibitor pembrolizumab, a cancer immunotherapy drug, shrank or halted growth of tumors in 76 percent of patients with pleural mesothelioma, a rare and deadly form of cancer that arises in the outer lining of the lungs and internal chest wall, according to a new study from researchers in the Perelman School of Medicine at the Unive

Genetically modified versions of patients’ own immune cells successfully traveled to tumors they were designed to attack in an early-stage trial for mesothelioma and pancreatic and ovarian cancers at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.

Once again, researchers at Penn’s Abramson Cancer Center have extended the reach of the immune system in the fight against metastatic melanoma, this time by combining the checkpoint inhibitor tremelimumab with an anti-CD40 monoclonal antibody drug.

The Botswana-UPenn Partnership (BUP) is collaborating with Microsoft, the Botswana Innovation Hub, and other global partners to launch the first telemedicine service in Africa using TV white spaces to bring internet connectivity to hospitals and clinics across rural areas of Botswana.

Two widely used targeted therapy drugs— approved by the FDA for use in metastatic kidney cancer —are no more effective than a placebo in preventing return of the disease to increase life spans of patients suffering from advanced kidney cancer after surgery, according to new results to be presented by a researcher at the University of Pennsylvania’s 

Doctors treating patients battling both HIV and tuberculosis (TB)—many of whom live in Africa—are faced with the decision when to start those patients on antiretroviral therapy (ART) while they are being treated with antibiotics for active TB disease. 

Penn Medicine researchers have begun a new immunotherapy trial with the “checkpoint inhibitor” known as pembrolizumab in patients with oligometastatic lung cancer—a state characterized by a few metastases in a confined area—who have completed conventional treatments and are considered free of active disease but remain at a high risk for recurrence.