Tumor-on-a-Chip Offers Insight into Cancer-Fighting Cells in Immunotherapy News / October 27, 2025 For a little over two decades, chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cell therapy has emerged as a powerful new way to treat cancer. By extracting patients’ T cells, re-engineering them to recognize tumor antigens, and infusing them back into the body, physicians have achieved effective treatments for leukemia and lymphoma... Read More
Nanoparticle Blueprints Reveal Path to Smarter Medicines News / October 23, 2025 Lipid nanoparticles (LNPs) are the delivery vehicles of modern medicine, carrying cancer drugs, gene therapies and vaccines into cells. Until recently, many scientists assumed that all LNPs followed more or less the same blueprint, like a fleet of trucks built from the same design Now, in Nature Biotechnology, researchers from... Read More
Clark Foundation Invests $11 Million in the Next Generation of Penn Engineers News / October 21, 2025 The Clark Foundation deepens the program’s mission, opening new pathways for students to grow as engineers and community leaders. Read More
Penn Engineers Unveil Generative AI Model that Designs New Antibiotics News / September 2, 2025 Uniting expertise in AI design and antibiotic discovery, two Penn labs have created a generative model that could redefine drug development. Read More
Reengineering AI to Target “Undruggable” Disease Proteins News / August 13, 2025 A study published in Nature Biotechnology reveals a powerful new use for artificial intelligence: designing small, drug-like molecules that can stick to and break down harmful proteins in the body — even when scientists don’t know what those proteins look like. The breakthrough could lead to new treatments for diseases that have... Read More
AI Uncovers New Antibiotics in Ancient Microbes News / August 12, 2025 They’ve survived for billions of years in boiling acid, deep-sea vents and salt flats. Now, some of Earth’s oldest life forms — microbes called Archaea — are offering a new weapon in the fight against one of today’s most urgent health threats: antibiotic resistance.In a new study published in Nature... Read More
Centuries After Discovery, Red Blood Cells Still Hold Surprises News / August 6, 2025 Red blood cells, long thought to be passive bystanders in the formation of blood clots, actually play an active role in helping clots contract, according to a new study from researchers at the University of Pennsylvania. “This discovery reshapes how we understand one of the body’s most vital processes,” says... Read More
AI finds hundreds of potential antibiotics in snake and spider venom News / July 28, 2025 Snake, scorpion and spider venom are most frequently associated with poisonous bites, but with the help of artificial intelligence, they might be able to help fight antibiotic resistance, which contributes to more than one million deaths worldwide each year. In a study published in Nature Communications, researchers at the University... Read More
Engineering a Healthier Future: Kelsey Swingle’s Journey from Penn Student to Rice Faculty News / July 22, 2025 Kelsey Swingle (GrENG’25) has made a remarkable leap from doctoral training at Penn to a tenure-track faculty position at Rice University. Her pioneering work on lipid nanoparticle delivery of mRNA therapeutics targets critical women’s health issues like pre-eclampsia, addressing a major gap in reproductive medicine. Trained in the Mitchell Lab... Read More
Less Pain, More Gain: A New Recipe for Safer, Stronger mRNA Therapies News / July 18, 2025 As millions of people know firsthand, the most common side effect of mRNA vaccines like the COVID-19 shot is inflammation: soreness, redness and a day or two of malaise. But what if mRNA vaccines could be redesigned to sidestep that response altogether?In a new paper in Nature Biomedical Engineering, researchers... Read More
