Perelman School of Medicine

PHILADELPHIA — A $25 million gift to the University of Pennsylvania from alumni Mindy and Jon Gray will establish a center focused on the treatment and prevention of cancers associated with hereditary BRCA mutations.

All cells have the ability to recycle unwanted or damaged proteins and reuse the building blocks as food. But cancer cells have ramped up the system, called autophagy, and rely on it to escape damage in the face of chemotherapy and other treatments.

After nearly 13 years of study and intense debate, a pair of new papers from the Perelman School of Medicine, at the University of Pennsylvania have confirmed exactly how a once-popular class of anti-inflammatory drugs leads to cardiovascular risk for people taking it.

HIV patients treated with genetically modified T cells remain healthy up to 11 years after initial therapy, researchers from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania report in the new issue of Science Translational Medicine.

PHILADELPHIA — Nancy Bonini, Gideon Dreyfuss and Beatrice H.

Arthur H. Rubenstein, MBBCh, was awarded the highest honor of the Association of American Physicians (AAP) the George M. Kober Medal, this week at the annual joint meeting of the AAP and the American Society for Clinical Investigation.

Two drugs commonly used to treat age-related macular degeneration (AMD) yield similar improvements in vision for patients receiving treatments on a monthly or as-needed basis, according to a study from researchers at the Center for Preventive Ophthalmology and Biostatistics (CPOB) at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania

PHILADELPHIA — Having a virtual copy of a patient’s blood in a computer would be a boon to researchers and doctors. They could examine a simulated heart attack caused by blood clotting in a diseased coronary artery and see if a drug like aspirin would be effective in reducing the size of such a clot.

PHILADELPHIA — If Pygmies are known for one trait, it is their short stature: Pygmy men stand just 4’11” on average.  But the reason why these groups are so short and neighboring groups are not remains unclear.

A cellular protein called HDAC6, newly characterized as a gatekeeper of steroid biology in the brain, may provide a novel target for treating and preventing stress-linked disorders, such as depression and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), according to research from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.