PhD Graduate Program student Yunsol “Kelly” Jo, has been awarded a $2,000 Student Pilot Research Grant from Duke’s Precision Genomics Collaboratory to support a study aimed at developing therapeutic approaches to tackling an aggressive, treatment-resistant variant: neuroendocrine prostate cancer (NEPC).
Prostate cancer is the most common cancer in men in the United States, accounting for nearly a third of diagnoses. Prostate adenocarcinoma (PrAD) is the most common type of prostate cancer with histological characteristics, and is dependent on the androgen hormone. Early detection and androgen deprivation therapy (ADT) can significantly improve prostate cancer patients’ survival rate. However, despite the fact that ADT is initially effective, 15-20% of patients recur as the therapy progresses with castration-resistant prostate cancer (CRPC).
NEPC can be developed as a treatment-resistance mechanism in 20-30% of CRPC patients and treated with ADT. NEPC is no longer dependent on androgen or androgen-related molecular pathways and has distinct biological features compared to PrAd. Therefore, current treatment options for PrAd are ineffective for NEPC patients. The prognosis of NEPC is dismal due to a lack of effective treatment. Thus, it is crucial to understand the biology NEPC and identify vulnerabilities.
Jo’s team found that NPTX1 has multiple functional roles in NEPC growth, differentiation, and metastasis. However, there are only a few studies about NPTX1, so the molecular function of NPTX1 is still undiscovered in prostate cancer.
Therefore, funds from this award will used to identify new roles of NPTX1- and NPTX1-binding proteins that can drive NEPC differentiation and maintenance using an immunoprecipitation assay and a mass spectrometry (MS) technique. Their experimental approach can be applied to profile proteins directly and indirectly interacting with NPTX1. The team will send samples for MS analysis in duplicate to Proteomics and Metabolomics in the Department of Biostatistics & Bioinformatics.
In short, this study will be critical to developing therapeutic approaches to tackling NEPC cells.
Jo is a student of Jung Wook Park, PhD, and her research at Duke is focused on developing cancer models using a unique human cell transformation technique that allows us to test the potential of oncogenic factors with distinct subpopulations of primary human prostate, kidney, liver, and bladder urothelial cells. Also, generating preclinical cancer models more closely resembling human cancer types is an impactful contribution to cancer research.
“These models improve the predictability of treatment outcomes and prognosis,” said Jo. “I want to identify novel anticancer drug targets by examining cell signaling in tumor development.