Building Better Building Blocks
Designer Proteins, Molecular Networks, and Cells One of the ongoing challenges in cancer detection and therapy is to target imaging agents and deliver toxic drugs only to tumor cells and not to normal cells. To achieve this critical selectivity, Casim Sarkar, assistant professor of bioengineering, is targeting protein antigens that are uniquely or abundantly expressed […]
Understanding Cancer
Drug Efficacy and Development of the Oncosimulator “It’s like looking for a needle in a haystack,” says Ravi Radhakrishnan. “We don’t even know what we are looking for.” What he wants to know sounds simple: why a drug therapy for non-small cell lung cancer and glioblastoma (cancer of the brain) works in only about 5 […]
Translational Research
From Bench to Bedside and Back Again in Pediatric Brain Injury Susan Margulies and her colleagues used to study a brain or lung injury in vivo in the lab and only record what happened. If an animal stopped breathing, they observed. If its blood pressure fell, they waited. But clinicians who are integral members of […]
Soul of Invention: Brian Litt’s Quest to Bring Moore’s Law to Therapeutic Devices
Though his work promises to transform medical care for the brain and heart, Brian Litt is motivated by a less scientific realm: his soul. Memories of patients with epilepsy whose lives were tragically altered by uncontrollable and unpredictable seizures drive Litt’s determination to find new therapeutics. Recalling, for example, the mother who drowned in the […]
Red & Blue Racing takes 15th out of 120
Penn’s Red & Blue Racing team recently turned in a great performance at the annual Formula SAE competition, held at the Michigan International Speedway. From a field of 120 collegiate teams from around the world, Penn placed 15th overall, the team’s best showing to date. In just six years, Red & Blue Racing has progressed […]
Team McGill: Penn Engineering’s Triple Play
The McGill brothers’ defining moment at Penn Engineering came when all three of them filed into Professor Katherine Kuchenbecker’s Introduction to Mechanics Lab on the first day of class. Having reviewed her fall ’09 MEAM 147 student roster, Dr. Kuchenbecker was expecting three students with the last name of McGill, but was it possible that […]
Building a 1965 Shelby Cobra
Mike Peisach is not your average university student. This Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics freshman conceived of and carried out a plan to build a 1965 Shelby Cobra, a rare British sports car, from the ground up. From the time he turned 16 and got his first car, he was tempted to tinker with it, […]
Turning Light into Electrical Current
Material scientists at the Nano/Bio Interface Center have demonstrated the transduction of optical radiation to electrical current in a molecular circuit. The system, an array of nano-sized molecules of gold, responds to electromagnetic waves by creating surface plasmons that induce and project electrical current across molecules, similar to that of photovoltaic solar cells. Dawn Bonnell, […]
Molecules that detect, monitor, and help to treat disease
On the third floor of Skirkanich Hall, Andrew Tsourkas is creating new magnetic nanoparticles that may revolutionize the detection of early cancer cells. By “early,” he means when molecular changes in the disease are occurring, but before any anatomical changes are visible. Detecting Cancer with Nanoparticles Today’s magnetic resonance imaging scans typically only reveal tumors […]
Haptics at Penn: A Class of Touch
Inside the Towne Building’s Haptics Lab, members of Team Kuchenbecker are bent over their work stations, completely absorbed in individual projects. A question is raised from one of the benches and soon the dynamic changes: a diverse and interesting mix of doctoral, master’s, undergraduate, and high school students gather around a central work table to […]