Press Release

For Immediate Release
Contact: Susan Preston
(973) 972-7265

Nationally Recognized Prostate Cancer Researcher Receives $4.5 million NIH Grant

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has awarded a prestigious five-year $4.5 million grant to Dr. Cory Abate-Shen, an internationally recognized researcher in the field of prostate cancer and resident faculty member at the Center for Advanced Biotechnology and Medicine (CABM).

This grant will allow Dr. Abate-Shen and collaborator Dr. Michael Shen, also a faculty member at CABM, to build on research using mutant mice models to develop a better understanding the molecular pathways of prostate cancer in order to develop new therapeutic approaches for treating this disease.

"With this continued funding, we will pursue studies that will yield fundamental insights into basic molecular mechanisms of carcinogenesis and also will have considerable clinical relevance," said Dr. Abate-Shen, who is co-leader of the Prostate Cancer Program at The Cancer Institute of New Jersey. "Although focused on prostate cancer, our analyses should provide relevant experimental paradigms and/or broad insights of fundamental relevance to understanding cancer mechanisms.

Dr. Abate-Shen, in addition to her CABM and CINJ positions, is also professor of medicine and of neuroscience and cell biology at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey (UMDNJ)-Robert Wood Johnson Medical School. Dr. Shen is director of

transgenic and knockout shared resource at CINJ and professor of pediatrics at the medical school. CABM is a joint research institution of the medical school and Rutgers University.

Dr. Abate-Shen's development of mouse models of prostate cancer is part of a larger effort to develop models of cancer through the Mouse Models of Human Cancer Consortium, an initiative of the National Cancer Institute.

This grant is one of 25 national grants made by the NIH to institutions such as Harvard University, University of California at San Francisco (UCSF), UCLA, M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, University of Pennsylvania, University of North Carolina, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Baylor University, Vanderbilt University, Dana Farber Cancer Center, and Sloane-Kettering Cancer Institute.

"We have found that mouse models represent a powerful resource for studying prostate cancer," she said. "Our molecular studies are providing new insights regarding the pathways involved in carcinogenesis, as well as new prognostic markers for early detection and for identifying patients at the greatest risk for developing aggressive disease. With this information, we have also begun several chemoprevention studies using our mutant mice with the ultimate goal of directing the design of new rational chemoprevention approaches in human."

Nationally one in six men will develop prostate cancer is his lifetime and the incidence is even higher in the African-American population. This year in New Jersey, as many as 7,900 men will be diagnosed with this disease and 1,000 men will die.

Dr. Abate-Shen's new research has four components and includes researchers at the UCSF, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center :

Project 1 is designed to produce a next generation of mouse models, focusing on advanced stages of prostate cancer and metastases.

Project 2 will identify new prognostic indicators of prostate carcinogenesis, using functional genomics and proteomics approaches. These studies should not only identify novel components of the molecular pathwaysinvolved in prostate carcinogenesis, but may also lead to serological testsfor identification of stages of prostate cancer progression.

Project 3 addresses the functional significance of hormonal signaling for prostate carcinogenesis, using mouse models and tissue recombination approaches. These studies may provide important insights into the efficacy and mechanisms of synthetic anti-androgens as chemopreventive agents.

Project 4 will develop mouse models to examine the role of oxidative stress in prostate carcinogenesis, and will utilize these mice to directly test the efficacy of dietary anti-oxidants in a pre-clinical trial of chemoprevention.

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