Fungi have given medicine some of its biggest breakthroughs, from penicillin to cholesterol-lowering statins, yet most of the kingdom remains a genetic black box. Now Penn engineers led by Xue ‘Sherry’ Gao have built a gene-editing tool specifically for fungi and used it to switch long-silent drug-producing gene pathways back on. They surfaced eight new molecules—three with promising anti-cancer activity in cell lines.

Cachexia, a syndrome marked by unwanted weight loss, sickness, and loss of appetite that accompanies and amplifies chronic illness, affects roughly half of all cancer patients and is responsible for a quarter of all cancer deaths. Incoming Salk professor discovers that some lung cancer tumors can induce cachexia by communicating directly with the brain using a lipid signaling molecule—hijacking the nervous system and impacting behavior. Findings suggest that tumors affect the peripheral nervous system and dietary changes could be used to treat cachexia and improve outcomes in lung cancer patients.