2026 Shipley Prostate Cancer Research Awards Announced
Please congratulate the recipients of the 2026 Shipley Prostate Cancer Research Awards.
Michael Blower, PhD, professor of biochemistry & cell biology, will study how the nonconventional kinesin Kif4a regulates the DNA damage response in normal and prostate cancer cells. They will explore how elevated Kif4a expression promotes cancer cell growth and determine if Kif4a inhibition is lethal specifically to prostate cancer cells.
Rachel Flynn, PhD, associate professor of pharmacology, physiology & biophysics, will study how cancer cells gain cellular immortality through the activation of the alternative lengthening of telomeres (ALT) pathway. ALT occurs in lethal metastatic prostate cancer, but the mechanisms promoting the activation of ALT are unknown. This research aims to identify the genetic basis of ALT activation in metastatic prostate cancer.
Deborah Lang, PhD, associate professor of dermatology, will study if there are any outcome differences between two treatment options (abiraterone, enzalutamide) for patients with metastatic hormone-sensitive prostate cancer (mHSPC). This work will be performed in collaboration with the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs, utilizing their large healthcare system database, and will provide guidance on selecting treatments for mHSPC.
Ignaty Leshchiner, PhD, assistant professor of medicine/computational biomedicine, and Gerald Denis, PhD, professor of medicine/hematology & medical oncology, previously found that plasma exosomes from diabetic patients carry distinct microRNAs that reprogram prostate cancer cells, inducing epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition and stable transcriptional changes via epigenetic pathways. This project will investigate how diabetic exosomes drive persistent metastatic phenotypes on the epigenetic level.