News Releases

Jumping genes do most of their jumping, not during the development of sperm and egg cells, but during the development of the embryo itself. The research, published this month in Genes and Development, "challenges standard assumptions on the timing of when mobile DNA, so-called jumping genes, insert into the human genome," says senior author Haig H. Kazazian Jr., MD, Seymour Gray Professor of Molecular Medicine in Genetics at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine.

Older women suffering from clinical frailty stand to benefit from the first potential medical treatment for the condition, according to a study presented last week by Penn Medicine researchers at ENDO, The Endocrine Society's 91st Annual Meeting. Ghrelin, a hormone that stimulates appetite, was administered to older women diagnosed with frailty, a common geriatric syndrome characterized by unintentional weight loss, weakness, exhaustion and low levels of anabolic hormones which increases risk of falls, hospitalizations, disability, and death. Those who received ghrelin infusions consumed 51 percent more calories than the placebo group, with an increase in carbohydrate and protein intake, not fat. Their growth hormone levels were also higher throughout the ghrelin infusion.

Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine have uncovered variation around two genes that are associated with an increased risk of testicular cancer. Testicular cancer is the most common cancer among young men, and its incidence among non-Hispanic Caucasian men has doubled in the last 40 years -- it now affects seven out of 100,000 white men in the United States each year. The discovery, published in the May 31, 2009 online issue of Nature Genetics, is the first step toward understanding which men are at high risk of disease.

Although the majority of patients with follicular lymphoma initially respond to chemotherapy, the disease frequently recurs, eventually becoming resistant to available therapies. Patients treated with traditional chemotherapy followed by a personalized vaccine were found to have a 44 percent increase in progression-free survival compared with patients who responded to chemotherapy but received a control vaccine, according to research from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine.

In what researchers are calling a breakthrough, patients with thyroid cancer that is resistant to radioactive iodine therapy were found to respond well to sorafenib, a University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine researcher reported today at the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO). The phase II clinical trial data highlight an intensive effort at the Abramson Cancer Center to develop effective, personalized therapies for these patients, who have previously had few options for treatment.

Physicians say use of new oral chemotherapy medications poses more chances for patients to skip doses, miss prescription refills, and take their drugs in a dangerous way.

Abramson Cancer Center Director Craig Thompson, MD, PhD, has been selected to lead a research "Dream Team" for Stand Up To Cancer, the groundbreaking partnership between the nation's entertainment industry and the cancer research community. Armed with $18 million in funding, Thompson's team is poised to lead the nation's most innovative pancreatic cancer research project, which will discover more about what metabolic nutrients pancreatic tumors rely on to grow and develop new therapies designed to cut off that essential fuel. Despite the myriad advances in treating other cancers, people diagnosed with pancreatic cancer still face a grim prognosis - as many as 80 percent of patients who get the news die within a year.

Since 2000, nearly 1,000 "retail clinics" - offering routine care like sports physicals and immunizations and treatment for minor illnesses like strep throat - have opened their doors inside pharmacies and grocery stores across the United States. Retail chain operators proposed that the new clinics would improve access to medical care among uninsured or underserved populations. However, these clinics have been opened more often in higher-income areas that are less likely to be classified as medically underserved, according to a new study from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine published in the May 25 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine.

Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine will receive $7.5 million over the next five years from the National Cancer Institute to find new ways to treat esophageal cancer, in addition to traditional chemoradiation. This research is a continuation of the group's previous findings, which made substantial progress in deciphering the molecular and cellular biology underlying esophageal cancer, with broad applications to other related cancers in the lung, head/neck and skin.