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A new Penn Medicine study puts researchers within closer reach of vaccines that can protect infants against infections by overcoming a mother’s antibodies, which are known to shut down immune defenses initiated by conventional vaccines. That hurdle largely explains why vaccinations for infectious diseases like influenza and measles not given until […]

1 in 6 Children Loses Priority Points Due to Flawed Score System, UCSF Study Shows. Children waiting for new livers who are much smaller than their peers have a heightened risk of dying. Despite this, 40 percent of these undersized waitlisted children may lose vital points required to expedite transplantation, […]

A study published in the  New England Journal of Medicine suggests that erythropoietin treatment may not provide neuroprotection for extremely premature babies. This multicenter study was led by Sandra E. Juul, professor of pediatrics  and head, Division of Neonatology, at the University of Washington School of Medicine in Seattle. The researchers randomized more […]

A new prospective cohort study published last week in the journal SLEEP suggests that sleeping for 7 or more hours every night might not be all that it’s cracked up to be after all – at least when it comes to cognitive ability, gray matter volume, and white matter microstructure. […]

How do a couple of universally expressed proteins in stem cells and developing embryos influence an individual cell’s ultimate fate — whether it ultimately becomes, for example, a retinal cell, a heart muscle cell, or a stomach lining cell? That’s the question that Rajesh C. Rao, M.D., and his colleagues at […]

THERE’S NO SHORTAGE of ways to kill a cancer cell. Cut it out, poison it, blast it with radiation, shower it with killer immune cells—they all get the job done. But there is a shortage of good ways to kill cancer cells. One that knocks out all the bad cells in one swipe, […]

Lab-grown brain organoids developed from a patient’s own glioblastoma, the most aggressive and common form of brain cancer, may hold the answers on how to best treat it. A new study in Cell from researchers at Penn Medicine showed how glioblastoma organoids could serve as effective models to rapidly test personalized treatment […]

Bone loss that can lead to osteoporosis and fractures is a major problem for cancer patients who receive chemotherapy and radiation. Since the hormone estrogen plays an important role in maintaining bone health, bone loss is especially pronounced among postmenopausal women with breast cancer who are treated using therapies aimed […]

Working on C. elegans – a nematode worm commonly used in aging research due to its weeks-long lifespan and genetic similarities with humans – an international team of researchers from the U.S. and China have identified synergistic cellular pathways for longevity which can extend the host’s lifespan by as many […]

For the first time, researchers at Michigan Medicine have demonstrated that a cellular process is known to be involved in cancer and other diseases also play an important role in the growth of at least one type of normal mammalian cell. Macropinocytosis is an ancient process by which cells take […]

A multidisciplinary Michigan Medicine team is shedding new light on the role of regulatory T cells in pancreatic cancer — and, in mouse models, have uncovered a new potential target to improve immunotherapy approaches to the deadly disease. Regulatory T cells are a subpopulation of immune cells that help keep […]

DNA testing has become one of the most valuable tools that humans can rely on to discover possible traits and limitations. Simply put, DNA is the code in our cells, the most complex and richest piece of information we have about our existence. Genetic testing helped us identify changes in […]