News Releases

The National Cancer Institute (NCI) has once again rated the Abramson Cancer Center of the University of Pennsylvania (ACC) as “exceptional,” the highest possible rating for an NCI-designated comprehensive cancer center.

While extensive research has pointed toward ways to ensure patients receive evidence-based cancer care, putting these solutions into widespread practice can be a complex, challenging, and inefficient process. Now, a new grant awarded to the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania will help identify methods to bridge this gap, improving uptake of state-of-the-science care that can have a significant impact for patients.

For the first time, a team led by researchers in the Basser Center for BRCA at the Abramson Cancer Center of the University of Pennsylvania details the potential implications of a lower risk TP53 mutation, including an association with a specific type of Li-Fraumeni syndrome (LFS), an inherited predisposition to a wide range of cancers.

Activating the G protein-coupled estrogen receptor (GPER) – a receptor found on the surface of many normal and cancer tissues – has been shown to stop pancreatic cancer from growing, but may also make tumors more visible to the immune system and thus more susceptible to modern immunotherapy.

A blood test may be able to detect the most common form of pancreatic cancer while it is still in its early stages while also helping doctors accurately stage a patient’s disease and guide them to the appropriate treatment.

Chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cell therapy has been a game-changer for blood cancers but has faced challenges in targeting solid tumors. Now researchers from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania may have an alternative to T cell therapy that can overcome those challenges.

The deadly brain cancer glioblastoma (GBM) is often resistant to chemotherapy and radiation, but new research from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and Penn’s Abramson Cancer Center shows targeting stromal cells – the cells that serve as the connective tissue of the organs – may be an effective way of overcoming that resistance.

Non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients with higher measures of tumor mutations that show up in a blood test generally have a better clinical response to PD-1-based immunotherapy treatments than patients with a lower measure of mutations.

Genetically-edited immune cells can persist, thrive, and function months after a cancer patient receives them, according to new data published by researchers from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and Penn’s Abramson Cancer Center.