Associate Professor Ming Chen, PhD, presented a virtual seminar titled “Understanding and Targeting Metastatic Prostate Cancer” at Mount Sinai Tisch Cancer Center’s Prostate Cancer Center of Excellence in New York on Jan. 22nd, 2025. Chen discussed the molecular underpinnings of metastatic prostate cancer as well as possible vulnerabilities to exploit in order to develop novel therapies to treat it.
Notably, almost all prostate cancer-related deaths are caused by metastatic disease. Therefore, understanding and targeting metastatic prostate cancer could have a significant impact on reducing prostate cancer mortality rate.
Prostate cancer is the second-most common cancer in American men, ranking behind only skin cancer. The tumors are often confined to the prostate and therefore not life-threatening, but when the cancer spreads, it is almost always lethal. The American Cancer Society estimates that about 35,770 American men will die of prostate cancer in 2025, which translates to one death from prostate cancer every 15 minutes.
Chen joined the Department of Pathology at Duke University in September 2018, focusing on modeling human cancer in mice, studying mechanisms of metastasis, and translating new insights into therapies to combat cancer. His team expanded the scope of their studies to explore how lipid metabolism supports different aspects of cancer and the potential vulnerabilities associated with increased lipid metabolism.
Chen has authored 41 peer-reviewed articles, with 18 as first or senior author, in leading journals such as Nature Genetics, Cancer Discovery, Nature Communications, and Journal of Clinical Investigation. Chen has received numerous awards, including a 2024 Duke Science and Technology Spark Seed Grant Award, an Early Career Research Achievement Award from the Duke Department of Pathology, a 2022 Borden Scholar Award from the Duke University School of Medicine, two Duke Cancer Institute Pilot Project Awards, and a 2021 Mike Slive Foundation Pilot Grant Award. He is currently supported by three RO1s as Principal Investigator and one Department of Defense (DOD) grant as Co-Investigator.
Chen has also devoted considerable effort to teaching, mentoring, educational activities, and institutional service, both within Duke and beyond its walls.