Health Sciences

Try this thought experiment from the world of philosophy. Imagine a train moving quickly down a track. On its current route, call it Path A, five people stand fixed in place; in another direction, Path B, one immoveable individual waits. A single flip of a switch, at which you happen to be standing, shifts the train’s direction from Path A to B, saving five people but dooming one.

Two faculty members from the University of Pennsylvania have been selected for membership in the American Philosophical Society. They are Ronald Fairman and Rogers Smith.

A team of University of Pennsylvania researchers has developed a computer model that will aid in the design of nanocarriers, microscopic structures used to guide drugs to their targets in the body.

A new appreciation for the interplay between two cell nucleus proteins that lead both intertwined and separate lives is helping researchers better understand fatty liver disease, according to a new study by researchers at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.

The bacteria that live in dental plaque and contribute to tooth decay often resist traditional antimicrobial treatment, as they can “hide” within a sticky biofilm matrix, a glue-like polymer scaffold.

In the era of precision medicine, targeting the mutations driving cancer growth, rather than the tumor site itself, continues to be a successful approach for some patients.

Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have developed the first placenta-on-a-chip that can fully model the transport of nutrients across the placental barrier.

It has remained frustratingly difficult to develop a vaccine for HIV/AIDS, in part because the virus, once in our bodies, rapidly reproduces and evolves to escape being killed by the immune system.

By Patrick Ammerman You can’t study what you can’t see.

Jonas Salk created a vaccine against polio that has been used since 1955; Albert Sabin created another version that has been on the market since 1961. Together, these two vaccines have nearly eliminated polio from the face of the earth.