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

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.