Androgen Signalling and Prostate Cancer

What we do

Prostate tumour growth is, at least initially, dependent on androgens. Treatment for inoperable disease therefore involves removing circulating androgens and opposing their action using antiandrogens. This is effective initially, but many patients relapse with potentially lethal, metastic "castrate-resistant" disease. Understanding the molecular events that lead to therapy resistance is vital for new therapies to be developed.

Why it is important

Prostate cancer is the second most common cause of male cancer deaths. Currently over 40,000 men in the UK are diagnosed with prostate cancer each year. Our aims are to investigate mechanisms of prostate cancer development and progression, with emphasis on research leading to the development of new therapies or improvement in the application of existing therapies.

How it can benefit patients

Prostate cancer prognosis varies widely – some tumours are never life-threatening while others develop rapidly into lethal disease. Given the severity of side-effects of many drugs and the variation in response, it is important that patients and clinicians can make informed choices about which therapy to us. To facilitate this we are identifying appropriate biomarkers to stratify prostate tumours upon diagnosis, and models to identify potential side effects, as well as novel therapies.

Summary of current research

• Evaluating androgen action in prostate cancer progression and therapy
• Exploiting non-coding RNAs as therapeutic targets and stratification biomarkers in therapy-resistant prostate cancer
• MicroRNA drivers of therapy resistance in Prostate Cancer
• Engineering Novel Repressors for the Treatment of Prostate Cancer
• Nuclear receptor signalling pathways in stratification and therapy for prostate cancer
• A high-throughput and minimally invasive approach for diagnosis and prognosis of Cancer
• 3rd Nuclear Receptors Conference
  
• EXOPRO Study
• Tumour-microenvironment interactions in metastasis and therapy response

Job opportunities 

There are currently two exciting opportunities to work on novel ways to improve treatment options in prostate cancer using synthetic cells! One opening is for a postdoctoral biologist working in our laboratories, and one is for a chemist based in our collaborator's lab at the White City campus.

Our researchers