the University of Pennsylvania
PHILADELPHIA ?The accepted dogma has been that bone-forming cells, derived from the body's connective tissue, are the only cells able to form the skeleton.
New research from The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia sheds light on the role of cell receptors in acting as gatekeepers for infectious viruses. By using mice genetically engineered to lack a particular receptor in heart and pancreas cells, the study team prevented infection by a common virus that causes potentially serious diseases in humans.
PHILADELPHIA -- (July 20, 2009) -- A team of researchers from The Wistar Institute and the University of Pennsylvania reports new evidence refuting a popular hypothesis about the highly publicized failure in 2007 of the Merck STEP HIV vaccine study that cast doubt on the feasibility of HIV-1 vaccines. The findings were published on-line July 20 in Nature Medicine.
More and more children are participating and getting hurt playing sports each year. A new study presented at the American Orthopaedic Society for Sports Medicine's (AOSSM) Annual Meeting in Keystone, Colorado, (July 9-12) details the benefits and risks of repairing a torn anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) in young athletes under the age of 14.
PHILADELPHIA -- For years researchers have been searching for a way to treat diabetics by reactivating their insulin-producing beta cells, to no avail. Now, they may be one step closer.
PHILADELPHIA - Understanding the molecular signals that guide early cells in the embryo to develop into different organs provides insight into ways that tissues regenerate and how stem cells can be used for new therapies.
More pieces in the complex autism inheritance puzzle are emerging in the latest study from a research team including geneticists from The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and several collaborating institutions.
Pediatric researchers have identified hundreds of gene variations that occur more frequently in children with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) than in children without ADHD. Many of those genes were already known to be important for learning, behavior, brain function and neurodevelopment, but had not been previously associated with ADHD.
Two new studies from The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia advance the search for genetic events that result in neuroblastoma, a puzzling, often-deadly type of childhood cancer.
Originating in the peripheral nervous system, neuroblastoma is the most common solid cancer of early childhood and causes 15 percent of all childhood cancer deaths.
PHILADELPHIA -- How molecules of the oldest branch of the human immune system have interconnected has remained a mystery. Now, two new structures, both involving a central component of an enzyme important to the complement system of the immune response, reveal how this system fights invading microbes while avoiding problems of the body attacking itself.
PHILADELPHIA - -- Psychologists at the University of Pennsylvania have identified a cognitive shortcut, or heuristic, they call "Unit Bias," which causes people to ignore vital, obvious information in their decision-making process, points to a fundamental flaw in the modern, evolved mind and may also play a role in the American population's 30 years of weight gain.
Leonard P. Freedman, Ph.D., recently joined Jefferson Medical College of Thomas Jefferson University in the newly created position of Vice Dean for Research. In this role, Dr.
PHILADELPHIA -- Older women suffering from clinical frailty stand to benefit from the first potential medical treatment for the condition, according to a study presented today by Penn Medicine researchers at ENDO, The Endocrine Society's 91st Annual Meeting.
PHILADELPHIA -- Jumping genes do most of their jumping, not during the development of sperm and egg cells, but during the development of the embryo itself. The research, published this month in Genes and Development, "challenges standard assumptions on the timing of when mobile DNA, so-called jumping genes, insert into the human genome," says senior author Haig H.
PHILADELPHIA -- In a study comparing two strains of mice, one susceptible to developing cancer and the other not, researchers found that a high-fat diet predisposed the cancer-susceptible strain to liver cancer, and that by switching to a low-fat diet early in the experiment, the same high-risk mice avoided the malignancy.
