Expanding Access to Care: Penn Medicine
In the second full year as part of Penn Medicine, LG Health continued to expand patients' access to advanced diagnostic and treatment options previously unavailable locally.
Patients benefit from seamless coordination with world-class specialists who practice at other Penn Medicine facilities, along with access to cutting-edge research and clinical trials, including landmark cancer studies.
Personalized cellular therapy made headlines around the world when the FDA approved the first gene therapy, CAR-T, for the treatment of patients up to 25 years old with acute lymphoblastic leukemia.
The breakthrough treatment, developed by Penn Medicine, turns a patient's cells into a "living drug" trained to identify and attack cancer cells, bringing new hope to patients and their families. It's a pivotal milestone in the rapidly growing field of immunotherapy, and LG Health patients have direct access to the clinical trials that represent the next steps of this approach.
Want to know more about how the groundbreaking new cancer treatment works? This brief video makes it easier to understand.
"This is a turning point in the fight against B-cell ALL that opens up opportunities for patients across the world who desperately need new options," said Carl June, MD, the Richard W. Vague Professor in Immunotherapy in the department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine in Penn's Perelman School of Medicine and director of the Center for Cellular Immunotherapies in the Abramson Cancer Center.
Read more about Bill Ludwig’s journey; the first patient to receive CAR T-cell therapy.
CAR-T cell therapy has become a powerful addition to Penn’s cancer-fighting arsenal of surgery, therapies, and precision radiation treatments. Penn treated nearly 500 blood cancer patients in CAR-T clinical trials.
Additional trials of this treatment approach are now underway at Penn Medicine for a variety of blood cancers as well as solid tumors include pancreatic and prostate cancer.
Penn Medicine By the Numbers
LG Health is part of the University of Pennsylvania Health System (Penn Medicine), which is consistently ranked among the nation’s best overall and in multiple specialties by U.S. News & World Report.
Penn Medicine includes Perelman School of Medicine, a world-renowned teaching and research institution ranked among the nation’s top 5 medical schools by U.S. News & World Report for the 19th year in a row.
(FY17 numbers)