Jung Wook Park, PhD, holder of the endowed Rollie Assistant Professorship in Correlative Pathology, was named recently as one of 27 recipients nationwide of the Class of 2020 Young Investigator Award from the Prostate Cancer Foundation (PCF). This prestigious career development award is granted annually to the next generation of promising prostate cancer researchers.
Dr. Park and his team will identify molecular changes during prostate cancer evolution using his genetically engineered human disease models and next-generation sequencing techniques (Park et al. 2018 Science). If successful, this project will pin down the master control factors driving treatment-resistant prostate cancer including neuroendocrine prostate cancer and identify possible new therapeutic targets. Dr. Jiaoti Huang of the Pathology Department and Dr. Andrew Armstrong of the Duke Cancer Institute serve as co-mentors for Dr. Park’s project.