Department of Pathology
Duke University School of Medicine
Room 301M, Duke South
DUMC 3712, 40 Duke Medicine Circle
Durham, NC 27710
Phone: (919) 668-3712
Fax: (919) 681-0778
Email
Professor and Chairman
The major focus of Dr. Jiaoti Huang's laboratory is the study of prostate cancer. We are interested in different aspects of prostate cancer, including the molecular mechanisms of carcinogenesis, biomarkers, histological diagnosis, immunohistochemical profiles, the mechanism of tumor progression to the castration-resistant stage, and novel therapeutic strategies.
Our studies are translational in nature and the findings are closely related to human disease. One major strength of our laboratory is the variety of expertise we have in molecular and cellular biology, biochemistry, animal models, histology and immunohistochemistry. Another strength is the large amount of tissue resources available to us. We have access to thousands of cases of archival prostate cancer with long-term followup. These include formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded tissue blocks and frozen tissues. In addition, our lab, in collaboration with Owen Witte's and Andrew Goldstein's labs, has pioneered a tissue procurement procedure for fresh prostate tissue from prostatectomy specimens. We routinely process fresh cancer and benign prostate tissues into single cell suspension, and obtain purified basal and luminal cells. The purified cells are then genetically manipulated by lentiviral infection to model prostate cancer.
In addition, we have established collaborations with investigators within and outside of UCLA, as well as with international investigators. The lab has several major areas of research, which include:
Another important problem in prostate cancer is our inability to predict the biological behavior of prostate cancer when only small volume, low grade cancer are present on biopsy. Many of these patients have cancers that are indolent while some have aggressive cancers that were not well sampled. Because of this, many men elect to undergo radical treatment such as surgery or radiation to deal with the uncertainty, resulting in overtreatment in many whose disease would not have impacted life expectancy or quality of life. To solve this problem, we are actively studying the prostate biopsy tissue from such patients to identify biomarkers which can predict the biological behavior of the tumor so that patients are appropriately managed.
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