Rollie Endowed Assistant Professor of Pathology Jung Wook Park, PhD,, has been awarded a Duke Cancer Institute (DCI) 2025 Fall Research Pilot Award, effective Jan. 1, 2026, for his study, “DNMT3B as a Regulator of Lineage Plasticity and Tumor Progression in Neuroendocrine Prostate Cancer.”
Park’s pilot project aims to lay the groundwork for a new line of research with the potential to improve outcomes for patients diagnosed with one of the most aggressive forms of prostate cancer. The team will study whether a gene called DNMT3B (DNA methyltransferase 3 beta) plays a key role in driving neuroendocrine prostate cancer, a hard‑to‑treat subtype that often develops after standard therapies stop working.
By confirming how DNMT3B behaves in living systems and how it interacts with another important protein, REST (RE-1 Silencing Transcription factor), Park and his lab team hope to uncover new clues about how this cancer grows and becomes resistant to treatment. These early findings will help determine whether DNMT3B could become a future target for new therapies.
The project will also create advanced laboratory models of prostate cancer that mimic the disease in patients more closely. These models will give scientists powerful new tools to study how prostate cancer cells change over time and why some tumors stop responding to current treatments.
Because this work aligns with national research priorities, the results from this pilot study will strengthen future applications for major federal funding. Ultimately, the insights gained here are designed to accelerate the development of new treatment strategies for patients facing aggressive prostate cancer.