Penn Medicine, University of Pennsylvania Health System

For 25 years, Stacey Peeples has served as the lead archivist and curator of Pennsylvania Hospital—the nation's first chartered hospital. Her office in the historic Pine Building is packed with everything from Benjamin Franklin’s handwritten notes to antique surgical kits. Ironically, Stacey wanted nothing to do with hospitals growing up. Today, she's celebrating the hospital's 275th anniversary by opening a brand-new museum, meticulously curating eight galleries that showcase the evolution of healthcare. “We must be good stewards of what we have,” she said, because it allows us to trace the progression of patient care and guide us toward advancing it. “It’s the idea: when you know better, you do better.”

Congratulations to the Penn Medicine Against ALS team on being named a Discovery Award winner by the Longitude Prize on ALS, receiving $135,000 to accelerate our search for a cure. As one of only 20 teams selected globally from nearly 100 elite applicants, our multidisciplinary team is leveraging a powerful AI ecosystem to map how TDP-43 drives gene dysregulation across both sporadic and genetic forms of the disease. This recognition is deeply personal for our team. Founded by Yentli Soto Albrecht, PhD, who carries the same genetic mutation that claimed her father’s life, Penn Medicine Against ALS is driven by an urgent mission to eliminate this disease. By combining the expertise of clinicians, biologists, and AI leaders across Penn Medicine, we are utilizing tissue-specific large language models and deep learning to identify ten new therapeutic targets for rapid experimental validation.

We are proud to announce the grand opening of the Pennsylvania Hospital Museum, housed within our historic Pine Building. Following last week's ribbon-cutting ceremony, the museum is now officially welcoming visitors to explore the legacy of the nation’s first chartered hospital. “For people to have any interest in history, it needs to be told as a story,” says Stacey Peeples, Penn Medicine's curator-lead archivist. From the restoration of our 18th-century Apothecary to interactive "living" records of the staff and tradespeople who built our foundation, this museum is more than a collection of artifacts—it is a tribute to the people who shaped American medicine. “It’s been here for a very long time, and there are reasons for that. A lot of it has to do with the people,” Peeples said. “This all started by wanting to help others. It all goes back to the idea of compassion.”

To allow people to return home from the hospital more quickly and recover with care from home care nurses and remote monitoring by physicians, Penn Medicine started a Hospital at Home program. Buoyed by federal reimbursement changes for at-home care, the effort also helps free up space at the hospitals for patients in need of more complex care. Penn Medicine’s deep experience with various community and home services gave the Hospital at Home team confidence to start the program, said Christina O’Malley, MHA, head of Digital and Emerging Care Transformation.

Conducting clinical trials often involves a mountain of paperwork and significant delays in data sharing. But that’s changing. The FDA recently announced a revolutionary pilot program to review clinical trial data in real-time. By utilizing cloud-based platforms and AI, regulators can now see safety signals and clinical endpoints as they happen—rather than waiting months for data transfers. At Penn Medicine, we are proud to be at the forefront of this shift, participating in the trials that will help define this more efficient, continuous model of research. Emma A. Meagher, M.D., senior vice dean for clinical and translational research, joined the FDA's press conference to share why this is such a pivotal moment for the field. When we streamline the process, we give time back to our researchers and, most importantly, provide hope to our patients faster.

We are proud to announce that Eric Morrow, MD, PhD, been named the Founding Director of the Lurie Autism Institute — a landmark partnership between Penn Medicine and Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP). Morrow, a renowned physician-scientist and Mencoff Family Professor at Brown University, will join the Departments of Pediatrics and Genetics at the Perelman School of Medicine this fall. Morrow brings decades of expertise in the genetics and molecular mechanisms of neurodevelopmental disorders, including autism and intellectual disability. His lab has pioneered work on rare inherited conditions, neuronal vulnerability, and molecular therapies — research that holds promise for translating discovery into life-changing care. "We are at an unprecedented moment in autism research," said Morrow. "The convergence of genomic science, artificial intelligence, and institutional collaboration creates extraordinary opportunities to close knowledge gaps and develop therapies that can change lives." The Lurie Autism Institute was established last summer through a transformational $50 million gift from the Lurie Family — the largest single donation to a U.S. academic medical center focused on autism research across the lifespan. The institute is designed to be a nationally and globally recognized hub for autism spectrum disorder research, clinical care, collaboration, and advocacy. We look forward to the extraordinary work ahead.

Yentli Soto Albrecht, PhD lost her father to ALS in 2024. While he was sick, she learned she carries the same C9 genetic mutation that greatly increases her own chances of developing ALS or frontotemporal dementia. While she initially planned to pursue virology after medical school, she switched gears in an effort to save her own life and help those facing similar circumstances. She spoke with Mike Jerrick and Alex Holley about how a "crisis of survival" led her down this path.

This Earth Day, we're unveiling our plan to roll out paper prescription bottles system-wide, just one step in our Sustainability Action Plan to reduce our environmental impact. In 2024, we announced our goal of becoming the nation's most environmentally-friendly health care organization, aiming to halve our carbon emissions by 2030, and eliminate them by 2042. We remain as committed as ever to this pursuit, and are excited to reach yet another milestone in this journey. Chief Pharmacy Officer Nishaminy Kasbekar, BS, PharmD, FASHP shares more about this latest innovation and other plans for the future. "We are delivering the next generation of care, built for our patients and our planet," she said.

We are thrilled to congratulate our Penn Medicine and Children's Hospital of Philadelphia team — Jean Bennett, MD, PhD, Albert Maguire, MD, and Katherine High, MD —on receiving the Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences for their work in developing the first FDA-approved gene therapy for an inherited condition, which dramatically improves sight in people with a form of blindness called Leber Congenital Amaurosis (LCA). Their story is a masterclass in scientific resilience. At a time when gene therapy faced immense skepticism, this team stayed the course. Their breakthrough treatment for Leber Congenital Amaurosis (LCA) did more than restore sight; it provided a regulatory and scientific roadmap for the entire field of genomic medicine. "This group of incredible physician-scientists persisted and created something that is providing sight to people who would have been completely blind as early as kindergarten," said Jon Epstein, MD, dean of the Perelman School of Medicine and EVP of the University of Pennsylvania Health System. "Their belief in the power of life-changing science has led to breathtaking results and richly deserved global recognition."