Health Sciences

PHILADELPHIA — A multi-institution group of researchers has found new candidate disease proteins for neurodegenerative disorders. James Shorter, Ph.D., assistant professor of Biochemistry and Biophysics at the Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, Paul Taylor, M.D., PhD, St. Jude Children’s Hospital, and colleagues describe in an advanced online publication of Nature that mutations in prion-like segments of two RNA-binding proteins are associated with a rare inherited degeneration disorder affecting muscle, brain, motor neurons and bone (called multisystem proteinopathy) and one case of the familial form of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).

WHO:             The University of Pennsylvania School of Dental Medicine is celebrating the opening of the Syngcuk Kim Endodontic

After seven years of widespread support and alumni participation, the University of Pennsylvania culminated its Making History Campaign, raising $4.3 billion, strengthening Penn’s position among the world’s foremost universities and making major breakthroughs in addressing society’s most complex challenges, Penn President Amy Gutmann announced today.

PHILADELPHIA — Lung diseases such as asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) are on the rise, according to the American Lung Association and the National Institutes of Health.

On June 3, 2010, a crew of six male astronauts from Russia, Italy, and China waved goodbye to their families, entered the spaceship that would be their home for the next 17 months, and prepared for liftoff. Next stop: Mars.

When US Airways captain Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger III made a successful emergency landing of his plane on the Hudson River in 2009, it wasn’t because he got lucky. In fact, Sullenberger, like other pilots before and after him, relied on a kind of finely honed muscle memory, having been prepared in flight simulators for emergencies, freak occurrences, and the unthinkable.

PHILADELPHIA — Nicola Mason and Yvonne Paterson have been named this year’s recipients of the University of Pennsylvania

The body’s immune system exists to identify and destroy foreign objects, whether they are bacteria, viruses, flecks of dirt or splinters. Unfortunately, nanoparticles designed to deliver drugs, and implanted devices like pacemakers or artificial joints, are just as foreign and subject to the same response.

PHILADELPHIA — According to a new study by researchers at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, patients with Barrett's esophagus and early or pre-cancerous cells have been shown to significantly benefit from minimally invasive therapy deliver

PHILADELPHIA — For decades, researchers thought that blood plasma behaved like water. But, according to new research from the University of Pennsylvania and Saarland University in Germany, plasma is more elastic and viscous than water, and, like ketchup, its flow properties depend on the pressure it is under.