News Releases

Anti-malaria drugs known as chloroquines have been repurposed to treat cancer for decades, but until now no one knew exactly what the chloroquines were targeting when they attack a tumor. Now, researchers from the Abramson Cancer Center of the University of Pennsylvania say they have identified that target – an enzyme called PPT1 – opening up a new pathway for potential cancer treatments.

A new program project grant from the National Cancer Institute (NCI) will fund research by the Translational Center of Excellence for Lung Cancer Immunology at the Abramson Cancer Center of the University of Pennsylvania to improve the effectiveness of chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cell therapy at fighting solid tumors.

In one of the largest clinical studies to ever examine the impact of using a blood test to detect treatable mutations in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), researchers from the Abramson Cancer Center of the University of Pennsylvania found that they could identify significantly more mutations through liquid biopsy instead of a solid tissue biopsy alone.

The Cancer Patient Education Network (CPEN) honored the Patient Education Team from Penn Medicine’s OncoLink with the 2018 Excellence in Patient Education Award. The award recognizes individuals or programs that use creative approaches to develop and circulate cancer education to patients and health care professionals. The OncoLink team received the award Friday during the CPEN annual meeting in Atlanta.

A single leukemia cell, unknowingly engineered with the leukemia-targeting chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) lentivirus and infused back into a patient, was able to reproduce and cause a deadly recurrence of pediatric B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL).

A therapeutic vaccine can boost antibodies and T cells, helping them infiltrate tumors and fight off human papillomavirus (HPV)-related head and neck cancer. Researchers from the Abramson Cancer Center of the University of Pennsylvania tested the immunotherapy approach in two groups of patients with advanced head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCCa) and found 86 percent showed elevated T cell activity. It is also the first study to show that the vaccine can help immune cells infiltrate tumors.

Adding another inhibitor to therapies that cut off a tumor’s access to blood vessels could be the key to helping those therapies overcome resistance in glioblastoma, a deadly form of brain cancer.

The European Commission (EC) has approved a personalized cellular therapy developed at the University of Pennsylvania’s Abramson Cancer Center, making it the first chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cell therapy permitted for use in the European Union in two distinct indications.

The research offers a paradigm-shifting picture of how cancers take a systemic approach to suppressing the immune system. In addition, it also points to a new way to predict which cancer patients will respond to anti-PD1 therapy that disrupts immune suppression to fight tumors and a means of tracking the effectiveness of such therapies.