Department News

Study led by graduate student Jie Luo finds molecular “switch” to prolong survival of prostate cancer

June 14, 2019

Wilmot Cancer Institute scientists believe they have figured out why a commonly used drug to treat late-stage prostate cancer often stops working after four or five months and appears to have a dual function that later turns the cancer into a relentless aggressor.

By describing how the drug, enzalutamide, inadvertently causes the harmful transformation, corresponding author Chawnshang Chang, Ph.D., and colleagues believe they have also discovered a way to block it from occurring, at least in mice. The study, led by Jie Luo, a graduate student from the Department of Biology at the University of Rochester, was published in the journal Nature Communications.