Perelman School of Medicine

front steps of Penn Nursing’s Fagin Hall in sunlight

Flattening the curve of the coronavirus

In the current fast-moving, unprecedented situation, what we do today to stem the impact of COVID-19 can vastly affect what we will face tomorrow. Two epidemiologists discuss what we can do individually and as a society to slow the spread of the disease.

Ramon Diaz-Arrastia is ‘at the uncharted frontier of brain science and traumatic injury’

The Presidential Professor of neurology in Penn’s Perelman School of Medicine, who began his post in 2016, is an innovative traumatic brain injury researcher.

Gloved hands hold a dropper over a tray of glass vials in a lab

The biology of coronaviruses: From the lab to the spotlight

The recent coronavirus outbreak, COVID-19, has been swift, but according to microbiology professor Susan Weiss, it didn’t come out of nowhere. Coronaviruses have been around for a long time, and new strains have transformed and may continue to emerge.

Penn is fighting pancreatic cancer

Researchers within the Penn Pancreatic Research Center and beyond continue to seek innovative ways to treat and detect this deadly disease—and are making promising progress.

Drug found to trigger the ‘energy balance’ system for appetite suppression

Penn researchers show how the FDA-approved drug liraglutide interacts with a distinct set of neurons in the brain’s “energy balance” system to suppress appetite.

outline of a human head with five contrasting profiles in decreasing size throughout the brain area

Schizophrenic no more: Two subcategories in the brain redefine a blanket diagnosis

In a study of more than 300 patients from three continents, a second type of schizophrenia was discovered by observing brain matter that looks healthy, but with increased volumes of gray matter in the basal ganglia.

A lab worker wearing latex gloves holds a vial of blood in a lab

A new way to predict lung cancer treatment response: The blood test

A Penn study shows a better clinical response to immunotherapy correlates with higher ratio of tumor mutations detected by a liquid biopsy.

Machine learning identifies personalized brain networks in children

A Penn study shows variability among children’s neural anatomy which may inform personalized treatments for psychiatric disorders.

Q&A

Tales of bringing the dead back to life

Meet Vikram Paralkar, an oncologist at Penn Medicine who has received extraordinary attention for his new fiction novel, “Night Theater,” a story where a surgeon is asked to bring the dead back to life.

DNA misfolding in white blood cells increases risk for Type 1 diabetes

A new Penn Medicine study shows that changes in a DNA sequence may cause chromosomes to misfold in a way that elevates the risk for autoimmune diseases.

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