Jun Mao, MD, MSCE assistant professor of Family Medicine and Community Health in the Perelman School of Medicine, and director of Integrative Medicine, recently received a 1.5 million dollar National Cancer Institute (NCI) grant to study the way in which genetic variations in estrogen synthesis affect women with breast cancer who are taking aromatase inhibitors, which are typically used to prevent recurrence. The drugs help post-menopausal women to further suppress their body's production of estrogen.
Although aromatase inhibitors have improved breast cancer survival rates, they often can decrease a patient's quality of life because of severe joint pain side effects, leading some some patients to stop using them too soon. The new study aims to help the medical community understand aspects of this painful condition so new diagnoses and treatments can be developed. For example, knowing a patient's genotype may predict patients who are at risk of these side effects, and clinicians may offer more personalized early interventions for effective pain management.
Penn Medicine is one of the world’s leading academic medical centers, dedicated to the related missions of medical education, biomedical research, excellence in patient care, and community service. The organization consists of the University of Pennsylvania Health System and Penn’s Raymond and Ruth Perelman School of Medicine, founded in 1765 as the nation’s first medical school.
The Perelman School of Medicine is consistently among the nation's top recipients of funding from the National Institutes of Health, with $550 million awarded in the 2022 fiscal year. Home to a proud history of “firsts” in medicine, Penn Medicine teams have pioneered discoveries and innovations that have shaped modern medicine, including recent breakthroughs such as CAR T cell therapy for cancer and the mRNA technology used in COVID-19 vaccines.
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