Prostate Cancer

PROJECT SUMMARY Cancer of the prostate is an extraordinarily common malignancy that exhibits substantial heterogeneity in its clinical behavior, ranging from indolent, slow-growing tumors to aggressive tumors that rapidly progress toward cancer-specific lethality. The Prostate Cancer (PC) Program promotes a multi-disciplinary research environment designed to integrate basic sciences, population sciences, and clinical medicine to produce novel prevention and therapeutic strategies that will positively impact human health. The program aims to advance and exploit scientific knowledge that will reduce the morbidity and mortality attributed to prostate cancer and lead to improvements in patients’ quality of life. The PC Program has three primary areas of focus where cooperative efforts (allocation of resources; faculty recruitments; scientific collaborations) are coordinated to make substantive advancements: 1) To develop approaches for determining early stage prostate cancer risk, optimize detection strategies, and deploy risk-based interventions; 2) Develop a molecular understanding of the androgen receptor signaling program to inform the rational design of therapeutic strategies for treating high-risk localized and metastatic prostate cancer; 3) Develop therapeutic approaches for the treatment of prostate cancers directed toward inhibiting key oncogenic (intrinsic) drivers, and modulating components of the tumor microenvironment. The P30 CCSG supports this research program by providing: key shared resources, particularly Comparative Medicine, Specimen Processing, Genomics, and Research Pathology; administrative and logistical support for meetings, pilot funding for new clinical and translational research projects, and recruitment resources for new faculty. The program currently has 43 members based at the University of Washington (UW) and the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center (FH), all of whom practice clinically at the UW, FH, and Veterans Administration Puget Sound Health Care System. Ten members have primary appointments at FH, with 33 members at UW with faculty appointments spanning 11 departments or divisions. Seven members joined this program since the last cycle. Thirty-four members (77%) have peer-reviewed funding, are the principal investigator of a clinical trial or are newly recruited and supported by the institution. The current research support of Program members comprises $11.4M in peer-reviewed funding of which $6.5M (57%) is from the NCI. Due to the efforts in promoting interdisciplinary studies, a substantial component of the research funding is in the form of P50, P01, and other collaborative grants. Program members published 833 papers in the current cycle, of which 27% were intraprogrammatic and 23% were interprogrammatic.