The Research Legacy of Penn Medicine

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The basic research findings emerging from Penn Medicine's laboratories advance the treatment of a wide range of diseases and medical conditions, as well as provide the foundation on which many of medicine's next generation of cures will be developed. This site brings together in one place information about those discoveries. This is a virtual portal to content describing the work and achievements of Penn Medicine's biomedical research community.

The Community Within: The Human Microbiome

When poet Walt Whitman wrote that we "contain multitudes," he was speaking metaphorically — but he was correct in the literal sense.
Penn Orthopaedics

The Penn orthpaedics research group is one of the largest in the nation in terms of grants from the National Institutes of Health.
Shifting the Clock: Chronobiology at Penn Medicine

Just as the earth rotates in a 24-hour cycle, humans and other animals have an internal rhythm.
Legacy of the Philadelphia Chromosome Discovery

The relationship between chromosome alterations and cancer had been debated for more than one hundred years.
Epigenetics: A New Twist on DNA

The relationship between chromosome alterations and cancer had been debated for more than one hundred years.
Maximizing Our Defenses

Although we often talk of the immune system as if it were one thing, it is really a complex, interconnected organization that includes many different types of cells, each with its own specialized activities and roles.
Learning from the Rare

Nearly 30 million Americans are affected by rare diseases, which are defined as disorders that appear in fewer than 200,000 Americans per year.
RNA

RNA is both the bridge between DNA and the proteins that carry out the functions of life and the toolbox that helps those proteins do their work.
The Aging Brain

Of all the afflictions that can attack people as they grow older, neurodegenerative disease is one of the most devastating.
The Mystery of Sleep

Despite the fact that sleep has been a universal of human experience for our entire existence as a species, it remains one of science's greatest mysteries.