Health Sciences

Kevin Volpp, MD, PhD, was presented with the 2015 Association for Clinical and Translational Science (ACTS) Distinguished Investigator Award for Career Achievement and Contribution to Clinical and Translational Science for translation from clinical use into public benefit and policy at the organization’s sixth annual meeting last month in Washington, D.C.

Researchers from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania received a $400,000 grant from the Caring for Carcinoid Foundation (CFCF), a non-profit that funds research for carcinoid, pancreatic, and related neuroendocrine cancers (NETS), to investigate the use of an experimental gene therapy that engineers immune cells to attack cancers.

If you have a map, you can know where you are without knowing which way you are facing. If you have a compass, you can know which way you're facing without knowing where you are. Animals from ants to mice to humans use both kinds of information to reorient themselves in familiar places, but how they determine this information from environmental cues is not well understood.

In a North Philadelphia rowhome, four students from the School of Veterinary Medicine are examining Pebbles, a friendly cocker spaniel. She’s a little overweight but otherwise healthy. “She has a great hairdo,” fourth-year student Hannah MacAyeal tells Billy, Pebbles’ owner.

In the first-of-its-kind study since the passage of the HIV Organ Policy Equity Act (the HOPE Act), which lifted the ban on organ donations from one HIV-positive person to another, Penn Medicine researchers report on the quality of these organs and how their use might impact the country’s organ shortage. 

Four different financial incentive programs, each worth roughly $800 over six months, all help more smokers kick the habit than providing free access to behavioral counseling and nicotine replacement therapy.

Two physicians in the division of Gastroenterology at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania will be presented Crystal Awards by the American Society for Gastrointestinal Endoscopy (ASGE).

Women know that Pap tests are a useful screening test for cervical cancer, but according to a new study led by researchers at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, most of those surveyed are unaware of the updated screening guidelines for the appropriate frequency of Pap tests in low-risk women.

Cell division is the basis of life and requires that each daughter cell receive the proper complement of chromosomes. In most organisms, this process is mediated at the familiar constricted intersection of X-shaped chromosomes. This area, called the centromere, is where special proteins gather and attach to pull daughter cells apart during cell division.

By Madeleine Stone  @themadstone        Decorating the outside of cells like tiny antenna, a diverse community of sugar molecules acts like a telecommunications system, sending and receiving information, recognizing and responding to foreign molecules and neighboring cells.