Liv Hospital and Istinye University Announce Groundbreaking Academic Collaboration with University of Pennsylvania's Perelman School of Medicine
ISTANBUL, May 26, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Liv Hospital and Istinye University have signed a comprehensive collaboration protocol with the University of Pennsylvania's Perelman School of Medicine to advance cutting-edge treatments, scientific research, and education programs. The agreement highlights innovative approaches such as CAR T-cell therapy and proton therapy, and paves the way for new horizons in healthcare—spanning clinical practices, second-opinion services, international training initiatives, and the establishment of state-of-the-art cell production laboratories.Pioneering New Frontiers in Medicine
Under this collaboration, Liv Hospital and Istinye University will develop joint clinical programs focusing on advanced treatment methods—particularly CAR T-cell therapy and proton therapy—and facilitate broader patient access to these breakthrough treatments. Turkish healthcare professionals will benefit from scientific conferences featuring Perelman School of Medicine experts, while tailored training programs—both online and in person—will be offered to Liv Hospital and Istinye University physicians.
Second-Opinion Service for Global Assurance
For complex and advanced cases, Perelman School of Medicine experts will provide consultation and assessments to physicians at Liv Hospital and Istinye University, ensuring patients benefit from a global standard of care. This second-opinion program will give healthcare professionals a direct line to internationally renowned specialists, fostering collaborative insights and a broader perspective on diagnostic and treatment strategies.
Strengthening Research Through Collaboration
Beyond clinical applications and education, the partnership sets a robust framework for joint biomedical research. All projects will adhere to international scientific and ethical guidelines, driving knowledge creation, innovation, and progress toward the treatments of the future.
A New Era in Cancer Care: Cell-Based Therapies
According to Prof. Dr. Erdal Karaöz, Director of the Liv Hospital Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cell Center,
'Today, cellular therapy has become a centerpiece of groundbreaking cancer treatments. Our collaboration with the University of Pennsylvania—the birthplace of many revolutionary scientific developments in this field—is immensely significant. Liv Hospital will be among the first institutions in Turkey to implement cellular therapies, and through the international-standard laboratories we are establishing with Istinye University, we are preparing to produce these therapeutic cells in-house.
'Under the supervision of the Ministry of Health and in compliance with all scientific and ethical regulations, these laboratories will produce cell-based treatment products that will soon be used in Turkey—especially for certain hematologic cancers. This approach is not limited to oncology; it has the potential to evolve into a transformative treatment model for solid tumors and for ongoing clinical research in autoimmune disorders. In the future, diseases like type 1 diabetes, systemic lupus erythematosus, and multiple sclerosis (MS) may also be treated using this technology.'
New Hope for Resistant Cancers: CAR T-Cell Therapy
'Harnessing the power of cellular therapies—particularly CAR T-cell therapy—offers renewed hope for patients with lymphoma, specific subtypes of leukemia, and multiple myeloma that are resistant to current treatments or have relapsed,' said Prof. Dr. Mehmet Hilmi Doğu, Hematology Specialist at Liv Hospital. 'We are working diligently to provide this advanced technology—often inaccessible in many parts of the world in collaboration with internationally recognized centers in this field.
'Moreover, CAR T-cell therapy extends beyond hematologic malignancies. It shows promise for autoimmune conditions and certain neurological disorders, and we believe it will soon become an indispensable pillar of modern medicine.'
Strengthening a Global Vision
Liv Hospital Group Coordinator and Istinye University Executive Board Member, Meri İstiroti, expressed enthusiasm about the partnership: 'We view scientific collaborations as more than just knowledge-sharing; they are transformative engagements that directly shape the future of healthcare. At Liv Hospital and Istinye University, we strive for a vision that not only addresses today's needs but anticipates tomorrow's challenges. Partnering with an institution as established and forward-thinking as the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania will fortify our country's international standing in healthcare.
'This collaboration—encompassing clinical programs that increase access to advanced treatment methods and research projects that drive scientific innovation—aims to add value across all levels of healthcare. We believe it will offer inspiring opportunities for patients, students, and budding researchers, further enhancing our collective capacity to deliver world-class care.'
About Liv Hospital
Founded in 2013 in Istanbul, Türkiye, Liv Hospital (an abbreviation of 'Leading International Vision') is a premier healthcare network offering world-class, multidisciplinary medical services. As part of MLP Care, one of Türkiye's largest healthcare providers, Liv Hospital operates JCI-accredited facilities in Istanbul (Ulus and Vadistanbul), Ankara, Samsun, Gaziantep, and an international branch in Baku, Azerbaijan.
Renowned for combining advanced medical technologies with personalized, patient-centered care, Liv Hospital provides comprehensive treatment across more than 50 specialties. It is especially distinguished in fields such as oncology, cardiovascular surgery, organ transplantation, robotic surgery, and regenerative medicine.
With a strong focus on international health tourism, Liv Hospital welcomes thousands of patients from over 80 countries each year. Its multilingual International Patient Center delivers full-service assistance, including medical second opinions, treatment coordination, visa and travel arrangements, interpreting services, and post-treatment follow-up—ensuring a seamless experience from arrival through recovery.
Liv Hospital is committed to clinical excellence, continuous innovation, and compassionate care, making it one of the most trusted healthcare destinations in the region.
Website: https://www.livhospital.com/en
Media Contact:FL PR and Communicationsasset@flcommunications.co.uk+905330202554
A photo accompanying this announcement is available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/6b98f9d2-0ccf-4ba7-8b34-5cf7764fa53a
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Washington Post
36 minutes ago
- Washington Post
What made Mount Etna's latest eruption so rare
MILAN — Mount Etna, the volcano that towers over eastern Sicily, has again captivated the world with a spectacular show , spewing smoke and high into the sky. But the defining event of Monday's eruption was the more rare pyroclastic flow from the southwestern crater not visible from a distance.
Fox News
3 hours ago
- Fox News
Woman declared dead by coroner, moved to coffin, turns out to be alive
A woman declared dead by the coroner after her husband found her unresponsive in bed was being placed in a coffin when morticians made a startling discovery — she was very much alive. The horrifying tale from the Czech Republic unfolded when an 88-year-old woman, who was thought to be dead, showed signs of life in her coffin. According to the husband of the woman thought to be deceased called the Pilsen emergency services to potentially help his wife. The husband told the emergency dispatch that "she didn't move, she didn't breathe," according to the report. When paramedics arrived, they confirmed the woman's death and the coroners were dispatched to the apartment. The coroner also confirmed the woman's death and undertakers were called to move the body into the coffin. The husband also told Blesk that "the workers transferred her to the coffin, and when they were right here in the apartment in the hallway by the door, they found out she was alive." An ambulance arrived shortly after, and the woman was transported to the hospital. While this may seem like something out of a horror story, this rare medical occurrence has happened before. According to the Cleveland Clinic, it's known as the Lazarus Effect. Named after the biblical story of Jesus raising Lazarus back from the dead, this usually occurs after CPR ends. Typically, this happens after a cardiac arrest occurs and CPR is administered to the patient. This medical phenomenon occurs after the patient is clinically pronounced dead. Some time later, the patient will begin to show signs of life and must continue to show these signs for more than a few seconds. According to the National Institutes of Health, there have been 74 confirmed cases in the U.S. from 1982-2022. It is still unknown how or why the Lazarus Effect happens.
Forbes
4 hours ago
- Forbes
How To Love Your (Agentic) Database Administrator
An Internet Geek Developers love meritocracy. Software engineering professionals don't judge individuals by the way they look, the way they dress and whether or not they have a purple-green hair dye rinse on their head (spoiler alert, it's actually considered a good thing)... and they never have. They tend to classify their counterparts and contemporaries on the basis of their skillset, their ability to show technical competency and their enthusiasm for the combined arts of coding and data science. If there's one chink in that argument, it's a possible hierachy between the developer community and the operations team. While the developers get to build, program and create, the Ops team are assigned the responsibility to underpin, maintain and manage. Some developers occasionally regard the sysadmins, database administrators and testing team as less skilled; the rise of DevOps has sought to unite these two streams and platform engineering is also aiming to create and reinforce bonds, but fractures inevitably exist. Could a new wave of agentic AI services in the data management space actually help elevate the status of this essential function and, just maybe, actually help elevate the status of this role to the tier that it deserves? Lithuania-based tech writer Jastra Kranjec says we're on the cusp. Citing the multiplicity of management consultancy reports in this space that suggest AI agents are about to really start helping us work (Capgemini's Top Tech Trends of 2025 survey points to their use to boost efficiency and develop automation), Kranjec says that AI agents have now 'evolved from experimental tools' into mainstream business solutions. 'Last year, even major enterprises like OpenAI, Google DeepMind, Microsoft and PwC began integrating them into their operations, proving them as one of the top AI trends. Moreover, this is just the beginning of AI agents` growth, with market projections showing a surging adoption in the years ahead. Last year, the AI agent industry was valued at around $5.1 billion. This figure is projected to soar by a whopping 821%, reaching $47 billion by 2030,' wrote Kranjec. While such massive percentage projections make for dizzying reading, perhaps we should centralize our focus on the actual jobs agentic AI can now take on. In the data management and manipulation space, that brings us back to the poor database administrator, could the AI DBA be about to become the real hero? Stewart Bond sees a role for this exact job function. In his role as VP of data intelligence and integration software at technology analyst house IDC, he projects that AI can now take on a central role in data orchestration and administration. 'The rise of agentic AI orchestration is expected to accelerate, and companies need to start preparing now,' said Bond. 'To unlock agentic AI's full potential, companies should seek solutions that unify disparate data types, including structured, unstructured, real-time and historical information, in a single environment. This allows AI to derive richer insights and drive more impactful outcomes.' Bond makes his comments in order to contextualize new services stemming from data streaming company Confluent. The organization has now come forward with new Confluent Cloud capabilities that are said to make it easier to process and secure data for faster insights and decision-making. Looking at exactly which products and tools are now on offer, snapshot queries is a new service in Confluent Cloud for Apache Flink designed to bring together real-time and historic data processing to make AI agents and analytics smarter. Confluent Cloud network routing works in concert with this technology to simplify private networking for Apache Flink (an open source data stream processing framework for running computations in 'bounded' - those with a defined start and end - and unbounded data stream environments) and this all sits alongside IP filtering to adds access controls, thereby securing data for agentic AI and analytics. 'Agentic AI is moving from hype to enterprise adoption as organizations look to gain a competitive edge and win in today's market,' said Shaun Clowes, chief product officer at Confluent. 'But without high-quality data, even the most advanced systems can't deliver real value. The new Confluent Cloud for Apache Flink features make it possible to blend real-time and batch data so that enterprises can trust their agentic AI to drive real change.' Clowes agrees with the proposition that Confluent didn't necessarily build this technology to enable, create or innovate the true arrival of the agentic DBA, but he concurs, if the continued extension of the company's platform makes this 'job position' a reality, then it will surely serve IT stacks in every industry for the better. We can certainly suggest that agentic AI is driving widespread change in business operations from the DBA, right upwards through the developer function to the application and user interface. 'However, for AI data agents to make the right decisions, they need historical context about what happened in the past and insight into what's happening right now. For example, for fraud detection, banks need real-time data to react in the moment and historical data to see if a transaction fits a customer's usual patterns. Hospitals need real-time vitals alongside patient medical history to make safe, informed treatment decisions. But to leverage both past and present data, teams often have to use separate tools and develop manual workarounds, resulting in time-consuming work and broken workflows. Additionally, it's important to secure the data that's used for analytics and agentic AI; this ensures trustworthy results and prevents sensitive data from being accessed,' explains Confluent, in a technical product statement. To address these challenges, the company says that snapshot queries in Confluent Cloud let teams unify historical and streaming data with a single product and language, enabling consistent, intelligent experiences for both analytics and agentic AI. With the company's Tableflow service integration, teams can gain context from past data. Snapshot queries allow teams to explore, test, and analyze data without spinning up new workloads. This makes it easier to supply agents with context from historic and real-time data or conduct an audit to understand key trends and patterns. 'The rise of the Agentic DBA is already happening… and there are some very 'human' reasons behind it. Dealing with disruptions like anomalies, outages, or performance optimizations is distracting (to say the least) for DBAs and data infrastructure teams,' enthused Karthik Ranganathan, co-founder & CEO of cloud-native open source database company Yugabyte. 'DBA agents are trained to respond and optimize automatically, allowing human workers to focus on more strategic business value tasks.' Ranganathan says that agentic DBAs are capable of anything from performing query execution patterns to analyzing resource trends to mentoring cloud cluster health, which means all these tasks can now be dealt with automatically. This allows DBAs to avoid 'alert fatigue' and learn from previously taken actions when their workload permits. 'The agentic DBA is a natural extension of modern databases, such as distributed SQL databases. The point of a PostgreSQL-compatible distributed database is to deliver cloud-native apps that scale effortlessly, are never offline and automate tasks like backups behind the scenes. The rise of the agentic DBA, which fine-tunes performance on the fly, will need to be part of any cloud-native distributed database going forward,' stated Yugabyte's Ranganathan. There are many technologies in this space now coming forward. If you're lucky enough to get invited to an Oracle welcome keynote on a Sunday night at its tech events, this is the kind of technology that the company talks about volubly. With so many database functions now ripe for moving to automation such as patching, maintenance checks, upgrades and perhaps also data normalization and deduplicatoin, it's no surprise to hear the database giant talk about database automation. Does IBM make something in this area too? Usually, is the safe answer. May this year saw the company announce its answer to database automation challenges in the form of Db2 Intelligence Center, an AI-powered database management platform designed specifically for Db2 database administrators and IT professionals managing databases. 'We've spent years talking to Db2 database administrators, understanding their pain points, frustrations and the complexity of their workflows. The feedback we have captured is loud and clear: DBAs are tired of fragmented tools that don't integrate with each other. They're tired of the endless libraries of scripts where each DBA maintains his or her own variations and they're tired of constantly reacting to problems and manually troubleshooting, as opposed to being proactive in their database management approach,' said Ani Joshi, senior product manager for Db2, IBM data & AI. Db2 Intelligence Center is a unified, intelligent management console purpose-built for Db2 administrators. It combines advanced monitoring, AI-powered troubleshooting and query optimization into an integrated service that simplifies and accelerates many aspects of Db2 management. With these (arguably) not insignificant automations now coming to the fore, some may ask whether we will have succeeded in making the role of the human database administrator redundant. The answer to that question is, obviously, of course no, don't be silly. What we're seeing here are the mechanical repetitively rote tasks that a DBA has to undertake, now taken out of their workflow to some degree (in some cases totally) and so creating a new DBA role that can start to work more closely with the developer team, provide more business-centric value through increased proximity to commercial teams while also now working to innovate and create new data services. If all that doesn't make you love your DBA just that little bit more, then you just might need a hug.
