Penn Medicine News Blog Archive: Translational Research

Penn Medicine researchers are the authors of a new study, out in the May issue of the Journal of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology, that examined the biology of the effects of a sneeze on the inner structures of the nose.

The Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine (PLM) is celebrating National Medical Laboratory Professionals Week April 22 to 28. Medical laboratory professionals are among the unsung heroes of patient care - the team behind the scenes who are “doing the best with every test.”

The Philadelphia Science Festival Carnival tents have all been folded and hauled away. There have already been four nights of non-stop science cafes at local watering holes. But, there are still six more days of the festival to go, and Penn Medicine faculty will be participating at events on most of those days.

In a layer cake of research labs nestled on separate floors in a remote corner of the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, a new use for an existing drug was uncovered. The drug, epothilone D (EpoD), stalled after original tests as a cancer treatment, but Perelman School of Medicine...

With this year’s Super Bowl setting a record for being the most-viewed show in U.S. television history, concussions – more technically, mild traumatic brain injury (TBI) – have probably been on many a mind this week. TBI has long been a leading cause of death and disability, with over 1.7 million cases in the US alone each year.

Research from the Department of Psychiatry could have ended up as four or five different interesting papers with moderate impact in the field. Instead, we were able to tell a complete story by linking potential genetic risk factors of schizophrenia to a functional disruption in how the brain responds to sound. We then linked those processes together by identifying reduced activity in special nerve cells that are designed to make other cells in the brain work together at a very fast pace.

How the rare informs the common is becoming a – well – more common theme in biomedical research. Working with people who have rare genetic conditions provides researchers with a unique window into learning the role specific genes play in more common diseases.

A genetic mistake that arose thousands of years ago spares rare HIV-infected individuals the ravages of AIDS. Researchers at Penn’s School of Medicine are in the midst of translating the language of ancient genetic mistakes into today’s cures.

Tucked away in two separate labs at the Department of Psychiatry at Penn Medicine, researchers have spent more than a decade researching and testing a new treatment for depression. The drug became the first new medicine to treat depression in more than a decade when it received FDA approval in January.