Dr. Jiaoti Huang will receive a new National Institutes of Health (NIH) RO1 grant titled “Glutaminase I Isoforms as Personalized Biomarkers of Prostate Cancer”, starting January 1, 2022. The grant will support Huang lab’s long-term research goal of discovering novel biomarkers for the optimal diagnosis and treatment of patients with prostate cancer.
Recent studies in the Huang lab have shown that prostate cancer, particularly at the advanced stages, becomes addicted to glutamine while benign cells use other nutrient sources to maintain their function. The Huang lab has been funded by the Department of Defense Prostate Cancer Research to explore targeting glutamine utilization as a novel treatment strategy. The new grant from the NIH will fund the lab’s effort in determining if the different isoforms of a key enzyme involved in glutamine catabolism may be useful in predicting prognosis and treatment responses in different prostate cancer patients.