Nearly 100% of UT Southwestern medical students match to residency programs nationally, across Texas

Nearly 100% of UT Southwestern Medical School students matched to residency programs – well above the national average of 94% – including about half who matched to hospitals affiliated with U.S. News & World Report’s top 25 medical schools, including UT Southwestern. More than 100 matched to Texas programs.

Simmons Cancer Center investigators receive nearly $15 million in CPRIT funding

Ten scientists in the Harold C. Simmons Comprehensive Cancer Center at UT Southwestern Medical Center have been awarded nearly $15 million in grants from the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas (CPRIT) to advance research on a wide range of cancer issues.

Healthy gut bacteria can help fight cancer in other parts of the body, UTSW researchers find

Researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center have discovered how healthy bacteria can escape the intestine, travel to lymph nodes and cancerous tumors elsewhere in the body, and boost the effectiveness of certain immunotherapy drugs. The findings, published in Science Immunology, shed light on why antibiotics can weaken the effect of immunotherapies and could lead to new cancer treatments.

Response to hormone therapy predicts radiation resistance in ER+ breast cancer

How estrogen receptor-positive (ER+) breast cancer responds to hormone therapy may hold keys to understanding how it will respond to radiation therapy, and an experimental drug that increases the effectiveness of hormone therapy also overcomes radiation resistance in breast cancer, a study by UT Southwestern Medical Center researchers shows.

UT Southwestern researchers discover gene regulation mechanism

UT Southwestern Medical Center researchers have discovered a method cells use to turn genes on and off that involves portions of proteins whose function has long been a mystery. The findings, reported in Cell, could lead to new ways of controlling gene regulation and may one day lead to new treatments for a broad array of diseases.

Cooling brain tumor cells could make headway in glioblastoma, UTSW researcher finds

Cooling brain tumor cells to stop them from dividing without killing healthy cells extended the survival of glioblastoma (GBM) animal models dramatically in a study led by a UT Southwestern resident. The findings, published in Science Advances, could lead to new treatments for this aggressive and deadly cancer.

Simmons Cancer Center investigators receive more than $17 million in CPRIT funding

Fifteen scientists in the Harold C. Simmons Comprehensive Cancer Center at UT Southwestern received more than $17 million in research funds in the latest round of grants awarded by the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas (CPRIT). The grants will be used to address scientific questions covering a wide range of cancer types and topics.

Same Difference: Predicting Divergent Paths of Genetically Identical Cells

DALLAS – Jan. 11, 2021 – A set of biomarkers not traditionally associated with cell fate can accurately predict how genetically identical cells behave differently under stress, according to a UT Southwestern study. The findings, published by Cell Reports as a Dec. 1 cover story, could eventually lead to more predictable responses to pharmaceutical treatments.

Researchers Uncover A Potential Treatment For an Aggressive Form of Lung Cancer

DALLAS – Jan. 5, 2021 – Researchers at the Children’s Medical Center Research Institute at UT Southwestern (CRI) have discovered a new metabolic vulnerability in a highly aggressive form of non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). These findings could pave the way for new treatments for patients with mutations in two key genes – KRAS and LKB1. Patients whose tumors contain both of these mutations, known as KL tumors, have poor outcomes and usually do not respond to immunotherapy.

Errant DNA Boosts Immunotherapy Effectiveness

DALLAS – Dec. 17, 2020 – DNA that ends up where it doesn’t belong in cancer cells can unleash an immune response that makes tumors more susceptible to immunotherapy, the results of two UT Southwestern studies indicate. The findings, published online today in Cancer Cell, suggest that delivering radiation – which triggers DNA release from cells – before immunotherapy could be an effective way to fight cancers that are challenging to treat.