http://www.pennmedicine.org/news The latest news about translational medicine and research from Penn Medicine - the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and Health System - including its associated Institute for Translational Medicine and Therapeutics (ITMAT). en-us http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss rachel.ewing@uphs.upenn.edu (Rachel Ewing) 2011, The Trustees of the University of Pennsylvania http://www.pennmedicine.org/images/pennmedicine_logo.jpg http://www.pennmedicine.org/news PHILADELPHIA — As researchers work on reconfiguring cells to take on new regenerative properties, a new review from Penn Medicine plastic surgeons sheds additional light on the potential power of adipose-derived stem cells - or adult stem cells harvested from fatty tissue - in reconstructive and regenerative medicine. http://uphs.upenn.edu/news/News_Releases/2012/11/percec/ Thur, 08 Nov 2012 12:30:00 GMT PHILADELPHIA - Garret FitzGerald, MD, FRS, director of the Institute for Translational Medicine and Therapeutics and chair, Department of Pharmacology, at the Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, has been named the 2012 recipient of the Louis and Arthur Lucian Award, given by McGill University, Montreal, Canada. http://uphs.upenn.edu/news/News_Releases/2012/10/fitzgerald/ Mon, 01 Oct 2012 14:30:00 GMT This summer, Garret FitzGerald, MD, chair of the Institute for Translational Medicine and Therapeutics (ITMAT), testified at a briefing on the Hill organized by American Association for the Advancement of Science that the current drug-development system in the United States is flawed and in need of change. http://news.pennmedicine.org/blog/2012/09/scientists-who-bridge-the-gap-rare-birds-indeed.html Fri, 14 Sept 2012 16:00:00 GMT The National Institutes of Health's National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) awarded $18.5 million to establish the Personalized NSAID Therapeutics Consortium (PENTACON), an international group of scientists led by Garret A. FitzGerald, MD, FRS, director of the Institute for Translational Medicine and Therapeutics at the Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania. PENTACON consists of 42 scientists from 22 institutions. http://www.uphs.upenn.edu/news/News_Releases/2012/08/nih/ Mon, 06 August 2012 12:00:00 GMT A physician from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania has received the highest honor bestowed by the United States Government on science and engineering professionals in the early stages of their independent research careers. http://www.uphs.upenn.edu/news/News_Releases/2012/08/early/ Thur, 02 August 2012 16:00:00 GMT While clinical trial results are being released regarding drugs intended to decrease amyloid production - thought to contribute to decline in Alzheimer's disease - clinical trials of drugs targeting other disease proteins, such as tau, are in their initial phases. http://www.uphs.upenn.edu/news/News_Releases/2012/07/tau/ Thur, 19 July 2012 16:00:00 GMT 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. http://www.uphs.upenn.edu/news/News_Releases/2012/05/block/ Tue, 08 May 2012 16:00:00 GMT A Penn research team, led by Mitchell Lazar, MD, PhD, director of the Institute for Diabetes, Obesity, and Metabolism at the Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, reports in Nature Medicine that mice in which an enzyme called histone deacetylase 3 (HDAC3) was deleted had massively fatty livers, but lower blood sugar, and were thus protected from glucose intolerance and insulin resistance, the hallmark of diabetes. http://www.uphs.upenn.edu/news/News_Releases/2012/05/liver/ Mon, 07 May 2012 16:00:00 GMT A team of researchers in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania has received a $3.8 million dollar grant from the National Institute of Health's National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI), to conduct a trial to study the impact of psoriasis treatment on vascular inflammation and lipid metabolism. http://www.uphs.upenn.edu/news/News_Releases/2012/04/study/ Thur, 19 Apr 2012 16:00:00 GMT Niacin, or vitamin B3, is the one approved drug that elevates good cholesterol (high density lipoprotein, HDL) while depressing bad cholesterol (low density lipoprotein , LDL), and has thereby attracted much attention from patients and physicians. Niacin keeps fat from breaking down, and so obstructs the availability of LDL building blocks. http://www.uphs.upenn.edu/news/News_Releases/2012/04/drugs/ Fri, 06 Apr 2012 16:00:00 GMT The 24-hour internal clock controls many aspects of human behavior and physiology, including sleep, blood pressure, and metabolism. http://www.uphs.upenn.edu/news/News_Releases/2012/04/clock/ Wed, 04 Apr 2012 20:00:00 GMT A Penn- and MIT-led team explained how rapamycin, a drug that extends mouse lifespan, also causes insulin resistance. http://www.uphs.upenn.edu/news/News_Releases/2012/03/baur/ Thur, 29 Mar 2012 18:00:00 GMT Researchers from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania have identified an abnormal amount a protein called Prostaglandin D2 in the bald scalp of men with male pattern baldness, a discovery that may lead directly to new treatments for the most common cause of hair loss in men. http://www.uphs.upenn.edu/news/News_Releases/2012/03/hair/ Wed, 21 Mar 2012 18:00:00 GMT A team led by researchers from the Institute for Diabetes, Obesity and Metabolism (IDOM) at the erelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, has overturned a "textbook" view of what the body does after a meal. http://www.uphs.upenn.edu/news/News_Releases/2012/02/textbook/ Wed, 22 Feb 2012 14:00:00 GMT Blocking autophagy -- the process of "self-eating" within cells -- is turning out to be a viable way to enhance the effectiveness of a wide variety of cancer treatments. http://www.uphs.upenn.edu/news/News_Releases/2012/02/new-combo/ Mon, 20 Feb 2012 18:00:00 GMT Gene therapy for congenital blindness has taken another step forward, as researchers further improved vision in three adult patients previously treated in one eye. After receiving the same treatment in their other eye, the patients became better able to see in dim light, and two were able to navigate obstacles in low-light situations. No adverse effects occurred. http://www.uphs.upenn.edu/news/News_Releases/2012/02/gene-therapy-blindness/ Wed, 08 Feb 2012 04:00:00 GMT The Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania is one of six institutions to be named part of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute's Lung Repair and Regeneration Consortium (LRRC). Each of the institutions will receive $2.5 million over five years. Edward Morrisey, PhD, professor of Medicine and Cell and Developmental Biology and Scientific Director of the Penn Institute for Regenerative Medicine, will lead the Penn consortium. http://www.uphs.upenn.edu/news/News_Releases/2012/01/lung-biologists-award/ Wed, 18 Jan 2012 04:00:00 GMT Scott D. Halpern, MD, PhD, assistant professor of Medicine and Epidemiology at the Raymond and Ruth Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, has been selected for AcademyHealth’s 2011 Alice S. Hersh New Investigator Award. http://www.uphs.upenn.edu/news/News_Releases/2011/06/new-marker/ Wed, 15 June 2011 17:00:00 GMT Discovering the step-by-step details of the path embryonic cells take to develop into their final tissue type is the clinical goal of many stem cell biologists. http://www.uphs.upenn.edu/news/News_Releases/2011/05/personalized-cells/ Thur, 19 May 2011 18:00:00 GMT An international team of researchers led by Daniel J. Rader, MD, associate director of Penn Medicine's Institute for Translational Medicine and Therapeutics, has received a $6 million grant from the Paris-based Fondation Leducq to study the molecular genetics of atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease. http://www.uphs.upenn.edu/news/News_Releases/2011/01/heart-disease-genetics-grant/ Mon, 03 Jan 2011 16:30:00 GMT Taking a cue from the world of business-performance experts and baseball talent scouts, Penn Medicine translational medicine researchers are among the first to find a way to measure the productivity of collaborations in a young, emerging institute. http://www.uphs.upenn.edu/news/News_Releases/2010/10/measuring-research-collaboration/ Mon, 18 Oct 2010 15:10:00 GMT Earlier this summer, the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine received close to $13 million in stimulus funds -- the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) of 2009 -- to construct additional research space in the $370 million Smilow Center for Translational Research (SCTR), which is scheduled to open its first phase in early 2011. http://www.uphs.upenn.edu/news/News_Releases/2010/09/stimulus-funds-translational-research-center/ Wed, 15 Sep 2010 15:00:00 GMT Gene therapy for a severe inherited blindness, which produced dramatic improvements last year in 12 children and young adults who received the treatment in a clinical trial, has cleared another hurdle. The same research team that conducted the human trial now reports that a study in animals has shown that a second injection of genes into the opposite, previously untreated eye is safe and effective, with no signs of interference from unwanted immune reactions following the earlier injection. http://www.uphs.upenn.edu/news/News_Releases/2010/03/gene-therapy-safety-in-two-eyes/ Wed, 03 Mar 2010 16:00:00 GMT After a single injection of genes that produce light-sensitive pigments in the back of his eye, a nine-year-old boy born with a retinal disease that made him legally blind, and would eventually leave him totally sightless, now participates in class without extra help. In the playground, he joins his classmates in playing his first game of softball. His treatment represents the next step toward medical science’s goal of using gene therapy to cure disease. Extending a preliminary study published last year on three young adults, the full study reports successful, sustained results that showed notable improvement in children with congenital blindness. http://www.uphs.upenn.edu/news/News_Releases/2009/10/gene-therapy-restores-sight/ Sat, 24 Oct 2009 19:00:00 GMT Four professors from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, including Garret A. FitzGerald, MD, director of the Institute for Translational Medicine and Therapeutics, have been elected as members of the Institute of Medicine (IOM), one of the nation's highest honors in biomedicine. The new members bring Penn's total to 72, out of a total active membership of 1,610. Overall, the IOM named 65 new members this year and five foreign associates. http://www.uphs.upenn.edu/news/News_Releases/2009/10/institute-of-medicine/ Tue, 13 Oct 2009 15:00:00 GMT While scientists have known for several years that our body’s internal clock helps regulate many biological processes, researchers have found that the reverse is also true: Many common biological processes – including insulin metabolism – regulate the clock, according to a new study by investigators at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, the Genomics Institute of the Novartis Research Foundation, and the University of California at San Diego. The new data, published online in Cell this week, suggest that someday physicians may be able to use small molecules that inhibit or stimulate these biological processes in order to influence a person’s clock when it gets out of sync due to jetlag or shift work. Researchers may also be able to find new ways to treat metabolic disorders that are intimately tied to the body’s daily cycles. http://www.uphs.upenn.edu/news/News_Releases/2009/09/body-clock-communication/ Thu, 17 Sep 2009 15:00:00 GMT Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and colleagues have discovered that a type of prostaglandin – one of a family of fatty compounds key to the cardiovscular system – may play the role of increasing blood pressure and accelerating atherosclerosis, at least in mice. Mice that lack the receptor for the type of prostaglandin studied, PGF2a, have lower blood pressure and less atherosclerosis than their non-mutant brethren. The results suggest that targeting this pathway could represent a novel therapeutic approach to cardiovascular disease. http://www.uphs.upenn.edu/news/News_Releases/2009/04/new-blood-pressure-control-target.html Fri, 24 Apr 2009 14:00:00 GMT The circadian clock coordinates physiological and behavioral processes on a 24-hour rhythm, allowing animals to anticipate changes in their environment and prepare accordingly. Scientists already know that some genes are controlled by the clock and are turned on only one time during each 24-hour cycle. Now, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and the Salk Institute for Biological Studies found that some genes are switched on once every 12 or 8 hours, indicating that shorter cycles of the circadian rhythm are also biologically encoded. Using a novel time-sampling approach in which the investigators looked at gene activity in the mouse liver every hour for 48 hours, they also found 10-fold more genes controlled by the 24-hour clock than previously reported. http://www.uphs.upenn.edu/news/News_Releases/2009/04/8-12-hour-biological-rhythms.html Wed, 22 Apr 2009 20:30:00 GMT Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine have unlocked the mystery of a puzzling human disease and gained insight into cardiovascular development, all thanks to a big-hearted fish. Mark Kahn, MD, Associate Professor of Medicine, graduate student Benjamin Kleaveland, and colleagues report in the February issue of Nature Medicine that a human vascular condition called Cerebral Cavernous Malformation (CCM) is caused by leaky junctions between cells in the lining of blood vessels. By combining studies with zebrafish and mice, the researchers found that the aberrant junctions are the result of mutated or missing proteins in a novel biochemical process, the so-called Heart-of-glass (HEG)-CCM pathway. http://www.uphs.upenn.edu/news/News_Releases/2009/02/heg-ccm-pathway.html Wed, 25 Feb 2009 14:00:00 GMT A $50 million gift from philanthropists Jerome and Anne Fisher will support a new eight-story biomedical-research center at the University of Pennsylvania dedicated to the growing field of translational medicine, which emphasizes an accelerated pace for converting laboratory discoveries into medical therapies. http://www.uphs.upenn.edu/news/News_Releases/2008/06/fisher-gift-translational-research-center.html Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine have discovered that a group of liver enzymes called proprotein convertases (PCs) may be the key to raising levels of good cholesterol (HDL-C). The pathway by which these proteins are able to achieve an increase in HDL cholesterol involves another enzyme that normally degrades HDL-C, and was also discovered at Penn. The newly recognized relationship between these enzymes and cholesterol represents another target for ultimately controlling good cholesterol. The study appears in the current issue of Cell Metabolism. http://www.uphs.upenn.edu/news/News_Releases/aug07/liver-enzymes-cholesterol.html Researchers from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine found in a database study of women heart patients that COX inhibitors such as traditional nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) may undermine any purported protection against heart disease in participants taking estrogen therapy. The results were described this week in PLoS Medicine. http://www.uphs.upenn.edu/news/News_Releases/may07/cox-weakens-hormone-therapy.html Using a new type of drug that targets a specific genetic defect, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, along with colleagues at PTC Therapeutics Inc. and the University of Massachusetts Medical School, have for the first time demonstrated restoration of muscle function in a mouse model of Duchenne's muscular dystrophy (DMD). The research appears ahead of print in an advanced online publication of Nature. http://www.uphs.upenn.edu/news/News_Releases/apr07/muscle-restoration-muscular-dystrophy.html Experts from around the world will gather at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine for a special symposium to review the most current research and explore the future of personalized medicine. Hosted by the Institute for Translational Medicine and Therapeutics, progress and perspectives of personalized medicine will be presented by leaders in the field from the clinical, pharmaceutical, and ethics arenas. http://www.uphs.upenn.edu/news/News_Releases/apr07/personalized-medicine-symposium.html Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and School of Engineering and Applied Science have discovered a better way to deliver drugs to tumors. By using a cylindrical-shaped carrier they were able sustain delivery of the anticancer drug paclitaxel to an animal model of lung cancer ten times longer than that delivered on spherical-shaped carriers. These findings have implications for drug delivery as well as for better understanding cylinder-shaped viruses like Ebola and H5N1 influenza. http://www.uphs.upenn.edu/news/News_Releases/apr07/nano-drug-delivery.html It has been known for decades that heart attacks and strokes occur most frequently in the early-morning hours. Now, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine have provided the first evidence for the role of our body's internal molecular clock in controlling blood pressure and a mechanism by which this occurs. Published online next week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, this report points to the novel possibility of modifying blood pressure and the early-morning risk of heart attack. http://www.uphs.upenn.edu/news/News_Releases/feb07/internal-clock-blood-pressure.html Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine are the first to show that a mouse protein, whose human equivalent is related to defense against HIV-1, inhibits the infection and spread of a mouse tumor virus. The study, which appeared online January 28 in advance of its print publication in Nature, provides a new model for the discovery and evaluation of anti-HIV drugs. HIV-1, like the mouse tumor virus, is a retrovirus which infects immune system cells. However, unlike HIV-1, the mouse virus causes breast cancer in mice. http://www.uphs.upenn.edu/news/News_Releases/feb07/new-anti-HIV-drug-test-model.htm Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine have demonstrated the potential of a new type of therapy for patients who suffer from high cholesterol levels. The findings are in the January 11 issue of The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM). In this study, patients with homozygous familial hypercholesterolemia (FH), a high-risk condition refractory to conventional therapy, had a remarkable 51% reduction in low-density lipoprotein (LDL) or 'bad cholesterol' levels. http://www.uphs.upenn.edu/news/News_Releases/jan07/MTP-inhibition-reduce-high-cholesterol.htm Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine have identified a new protein associated with acute myelogenous leukemia (AML). Several lines of evidence point to a protein called Tribbles, named after the furry creatures that took over the starship Enterprise in the original "Star Trek" series. Tribbles was first described in fruit flies. http://www.uphs.upenn.edu/news/News_Releases/nov06/leukemiatrib.htm The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has awarded the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine $68 million over the next five years, along with The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. Institutional commitments of $30 million bring the Philadelphia consortium’s total to nearly $100 million. This new consortium is funded through NIH Clinical and Translational Science Awards (CTSAs). http://www.uphs.upenn.edu/news/News_Releases/oct06/CTSA.htm Building on previous work, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine have found that deleting an inflammation enzyme in a mouse model of heart disease slowed the development of atherosclerosis. What's more, the composition of the animals' blood vessels showed that the disease process had not only slowed, but also stabilized. This study points to the possibility of a new class of nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) that steer clear of heart-disease risk and work to reduce it. http://www.uphs.upenn.edu/news/News_Releases/sep06/newNSAIDs.htm