Penn Vet | Science & Research

Developing a drug to fight a deadly childhood parasite

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, one in 10 people around the world do not have a safe water supply close to home. Around the world, diarrheal diseases are responsible for one in 10 deaths of children under the age of 5. One of the leading causes is Cryptosporidium, a microscopic parasite that is typically transmitted through contaminated water and usually lives in the small intestine. Yet it doesn’t lend itself to easy laboratory investigation and, until recently, scientists have been flummoxed in their attempts to make progress toward finding a treatment.

How breast cancer originates from normal cells

Dr. Chakrabarti is interested in the fundamental question of how breast cancer originates from normal cells and how molecular events in early tumorigenesis influence the course of disease, including metastatic progression.

Confronted With Bacteria, Infected Cells Die So Others Can Live, Penn Study Finds

The immune system is constantly performing surveillance to detect foreign organisms that might do harm. But pathogens, for their part, have evolved a number of strategies to evade this detection, such as secreting proteins that hinder a host’s ability to mount an immune response.

Penn Vet Working Dog Center to Celebrate Five-Year Anniversary with Ceremony and Live Demonstrations

The Penn Vet Working Dog Center, widely recognized as the nation’s premier research and training facility dedicated to the health and performance of detection dogs, will celebrate its five-year anniversary on Sunday, September 10, 2017 at 1:00 p.m.

Penn Vet Researchers Contribute Expertise to Checklist for ‘One Health’ Studies

A growing body of scientific research is focused on One Health, the integration of knowledge concerning humans, animals and the environment. Yet there is no clear, unified definition of what a One Health study is or how such a study should be conducted.

New therapies to prevent post traumatic osteoarthritis

Dr. Ortved’s research program at New Bolton Center is focused on joint disease, using the horse as a model for human disease. Specifically, she is interested in developing cell and gene therapies to improve cartilage repair and prevent the development of osteoarthritis.

A Perturbed Skin Microbiome Can Be ‘Contagious’ and Promote Inflammation, Penn Study Finds

Even in healthy individuals, the skin plays host to a menagerie of bacteria, fungi and viruses. Growing scientific evidence suggests that this lively community, collectively known as the skin microbiome, serves an important role in healing, allergies, inflammatory responses and protection from infection.

At right, Dr. Gustavo Aguirre receives the Proctor Medal from ARVO Board Trustee Steven J. Fliesler

2017 ARVO Award Recipients Honored at Annual Meeting

The Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology (ARVO) is pleased to announce its 2017 ARVO Achievement Award recipients. These award recipients will be acknowledged at the ARVO 2017 Annual Meeting, May 7 – 11, in Baltimore, MD.

New treatments for laminitis, a horse disease that felled Barbaro

Andrew van Eps, now an associate professor of equine musculoskeletal research at the School of Veterinary Medicine’s New Bolton Center, was a resident at Penn Vet back in 2006 when Derby winner Barbaro was treated there for a broken leg sustained in the Preakness. Though Dean Richardson, Penn Vet’s Charles W. Raker Professor of Equine Surgery, was able to repair the jigsaw-puzzle-like fracture, the New Bolton Center team was not able to spare the horse from the laminitis that followed.

Penn Vet prof updates popular book on domestic dogs

Penn Vet professor James Serpell has updated his popular book “The Domestic Dog: Its Evolution, Behavior and Interactions With People,” which was originally published in 1995. The new edition captures the latest scientific information about dogs and their relationship with humans.

Penn Team Characterizes the Underlying Cause of a Form of Macular Degeneration

Best disease causes blindness , named for Friedrich Best, who characterized the disease in 1905, Best disease, also known as vitelliform macular dystrophy, affects children and young adults and can cause severe declines in central vision as patients age. The disease is one in a group of conditions known as bestrophinopathies, all linked to mutations in the BEST1 gene. This gene is expressed in the retinal pigment epithelium, or RPE, a layer of cells that undergirds and nourishes photoreceptor cells, the rods and cones responsible for vision.

Look to Lactate to Help Predict Ill Cats’ Prognoses, Penn Vet Study Says

Many factors go into evaluating the prognosis of a critically ill animal, usually involving a combination of objective metrics, such as blood pressure or blood oxygenation, and more subjective clinical signs, such as alertness or lethargy.

Penn Vet Establishes the Ralph L. Brinster President’s Distinguished Professorship in Honor of National Medal of Science Laureate

Through the generosity of Henrietta Alexander, Penn Vet will establish the Ralph L. Brinster President’s Distinguished Professorship in honor of Dr. Ralph Brinster, renowned faculty member, scientist, and National Medal of Science laureate. The Professorship will allow Penn Vet to recruit a faculty member who will contribute to the preeminence of the School and University.

Mathematical Models Lend Penn Vet Professor Insights Into Diabetes

The model also identified a potential mechanism for glucose effectiveness. Stefanovski was among those who collaborated with Francis Collins, now director of the NIH, to find risk factors for Type 2 diabetes. Among the genetic variations that increased susceptibility were mutations in glucokinase.

Penn Vet Team Identifies New Therapeutic Targets for the Tropical Disease Leishmaniasis

Each year, about 2 million people contract leishmaniasis, a parasitic disease transmitted by the bite of a sand fly. The cutaneous form of the disease results in disfiguring skin ulcers that may take months or years to heal and in rare cases can become metastatic, causing major tissue damage.

T Cells Support Long-lived Antibody-producing Cells, Penn-led Team Finds

If you’ve ever wondered how a vaccine given decades ago can still protect against infection, you have your plasma cells to thank. Plasma cells are long-lived B cells that reside in the bone marrow and churn out antibodies against previously encountered vaccines or pathogens.

Penn Vet Study Shows How Solid Tumors Resist Immunotherapy

Immunotherapies have revolutionized cancer treatment, offering hope to those whose malignancies have stubbornly survived other existing treatments. Yet solid tumor cancers are often resistant to these approaches.

Working Dog Center adds full-time law enforcement trainer

Bob Dougherty, who served for three decades as a police K9 officer for Cheltenham Township, recently joined the Penn Vet Working Dog Center as a full-time law enforcement trainer to enhance the Center’s teaching resources for police dogs and their handlers.

Penn Vet Research Identifies New Target for Taming Ebola

Viruses and their hosts are in a eternal game of one-upmanship. If a host cell evolves a way to stop a virus from spreading, the virus will look for a new path. And so on and so forth.

Epigenetic Change Ties Mitochondrial Dysfunction to Tumor Progression

In a new report published in the journal Cell Discovery, a team led by researchers in the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine has identified a mechanism by which mitochondria can drive changes in nuclear gene expression that are associated with tumor progression. The epigenetic process is carried out by a protein that is triggered in response to mitochondrial oxidative or metabolic stress. When this interaction was blocked by chemical compounds, the team was able to reduce cancer gene expression.

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