News Releases

With doctors and researchers around the world searching for effective treatments for COVID-19, many drugs approved to treat other diseases are being used in hopes that they’ll be effective against the virus, a use that’s known as “off-label.”

Six years ago, David C. Fajgenbaum, MD, MBA, MSc, both a Penn Medicine researcher and patient, tried an experimental treatment based on his laboratory research findings in the hopes of saving his own life.

Now researchers at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania say they know what’s happening at the cellular level of the immune system when these cytokine storms occur, and the answer not only informs future potential Castleman therapies but may also provide new insight into why similar events take place in COVID-19 patients.

It’s known that genetics, or an inherited genome, is a major determinant of one’s risk for autoimmune diseases, like Type 1 diabetes.

Researchers at Penn Medicine discovered that adenine nucleotide translocator (ANT) is critical for a quality control process called mitophagy.

James Wilson, MD, PhD, recalls being struck by the devastating toll of rare diseases as a young physician in the 1980s. He set out on a path to correct the genes that cause these conditions, including spinal muscle atrophy (SMA), the most common inherited fatal disease in infants.

A large genomic study of nearly 275,000 people led by Penn Medicine researchers revealed new insights into genetic drivers of heavy drinking and alcohol use disorder (AUD), the uncontrollable pattern of alcohol use commonly referred to as alcoholism.

A new treatment for patients with a form of congenital retinal blindness has shown success in improving vision, according to results published today in Nature Medicine led by researchers at the Scheie Eye Institute in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.

Penn Medicine will join four other leading clinical research organizations to understand the dynamic balancing act of the human immune system, how it senses friend from foe and what goes wrong during illness.