Jung Wook Park, PhD, holder of the endowed Rollie Assistant Professorship in Correlative Pathology, has received an Idea Development Award from the Department of Defense Prostate Cancer Research Program (PCRP) for his research proposal titled “Transcriptional Reprogramming of Lethal Small Cell Prostate Cancer.”
Dr. Park and his team will pinpoint key gene regulators inducing the development of a lethal prostate cancer subtype named small cell neuroendocrine prostate cancer (SCNPC). They will utilize their unique preclinical prostate cancer models to profile temporal molecular changes during the initiation and progression of prostate cancer. If successful, his group will identify specific gene regulators for SCNPC that can be new therapeutic targets to prevent the development of SCNPC.