National Cancer Institute awards UNC-CH $5 million for unique prostate canc...( ce of androgen in the mice by castratio...),Health

ce of androgen in the mice by castration, the human prostate cancer goes into remission like in human patients and then returns about five months later and continues to grow in the absence of androgen," French said. "We are using the model to try to determine whether the androgen receptor regulates growth even when androgen is absent. These studies are geared to develop a gene therapy approach to preventing growth in the absence of androgen."

The third project, led by Smith and Presnell, will test the hypothesis that prostate tumors contain a small population of stem-like cells that express a primitive form. These stem-like cells can be stimulated to grow by androgen, but unlike benign prostate cells or the majority of cells in the prostate tumor, such stem-like cells would not die when the supply of androgen is blocked. Surviving cells could therefore be the source of the cancer that recurs in the absence of androgen.

Funding from the program project also will support the maintenance of a repository of tissue specimens from tumors collected by the UNC-CH team. Such specimens are critical for the investigations, as well as collaborative studies with other researchers at UNC-CH and from around the United States.

Kim will direct the Immunoanalysis Core. It will allow for sophisticated analysis of genes and proteins in both animal and human samples through a system relying on standard and fluorescence microscopy and image analysis using software developed at UNC-CH to measure molecules of interest in prostate tissue.

"In this country, almost 40,000 men are still dying of advanced prostate cancer every year," Mohler said. "Since the 1940s when we learned that the cancer goes into remission when androgens are taken away, either by castration or medical therapy, there has not been any significant advance in the care of patients.

"If we can understand better the 'switch' that turns these cancers on again, we would
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Contact: David Williamson
David_Williamson@unc.edu
919-962-8596
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
6-Oct-1999

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