News Releases

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.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved the first ever non-surgical treatment for the rare neuroendocrine cancers pheochromocytoma and paraganglioma. The approval was based on a multi-center trial led by researchers in the Abramson Cancer Center of the University of Pennsylvania and was granted to Progenics Pharmaceuticals for AZEDRA (iobenguane I131).

Randomized clinical trials are the gold standard of cancer research and can shed light on whether innovative, new therapies with great potential actually have clear benefits over usual care for patients. However, the seven randomized trials funded by the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and the Patient Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) to test proton therapy are enrolling more slowly than expected.

A poorly understood mutation in the brain cancer glioblastoma (GBM) is now being implicated for the first time as the driver of rare but deadlier cases of the disease, a team of researchers from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research reported this week in Cancer Cell.

Immune cell makeup of tumors is controlled by factors specific to individual cancer cells

The American College of Surgeons Commission on Cancer (CoC) has granted a three-year accreditation and its highest honor, the Outstanding Achievement Award, to the Abramson Cancer Center at Penn Presbyterian Medical Center (PPMC). To earn the accreditation, a cancer program must meet or exceed the CoC quality care standards, be evaluated every three years through a survey process, and maintain levels of excellence in the delivery of comprehensive, patient-centered care.