The long-term goal of the Prostate Cancer (PC) Program is to elucidate the pathogenesis of prostate cancer and implement novel approaches to its prevention, early diagnosis, and individualized treatment. To achieve these ends, the following Specific Goals will be pursued: 1) The molecular oncology of prostate cancer will be elucidated by defining the molecular lesions of proto-oncogenes and tumor suppressor genes that are responsible for tumor formation;2) Experimental models of prostate cancer will be developed and characterized to elucidate critical regulatory networks, enhance preclinical studies, and define new biological endpoints, including the mechanisms of resistance to certain treatments; 3) The experimental therapeutics of prostate cancer will be refined by using molecular determinants to optimize clinical trials and thereby generate novel decision-making tools for disease management. The PC Program replaces the former Urologic Malignancies Program. It now consists of 19 members (12 full members, 4 clinical members, and 3 associate members) from 6 departments within the College of Physicians &Surgeons at Columbia University (CD). Compared to the Urologic Malignancies Program, the new PC Program has fewer members and their interests are more sharply focused on prostate cancer. New leadership has been brought into the Program, with Carlos Cordon-Cardo serving as Program Leader and Daniel Petrylak as Co-Leader. In the past ten months, major investments by the HICCC led to the recruitment of Dr. Cordon-Cardo, as well a several other outstanding basic and translational investigators, including Edward Gelmann, Cory Abate-Shen, and Michael Shen. The comprehensive nature of the restructured PC Program now ranges from chemoprevention to novel chemotherapy, surgical oncology including minimal invasive procedures, radiation therapy, and quality of care programs. The number of trials and the number of patients accrued to such trials have increased. Approximately 78% of clinical trial accruals are of African American or Hispanic ethnicity. Several investigators lead local and multi-center clinical trials. For the last budget year of the grant (July 1, 2006 - June 30, 2007), the PC Program received a total of $7.4M (direct costs) in cancer-relevant grant support, including $1.9M (direct costs) in NCI funding, $1.7M (direct costs) in other cancer-related peer-reviewed funding, and $3.8M (direct costs) in cancer-related non-peer-reviewed funding. The total number of publications since the previous submission was 172, of which 23% were intra-programmatic and 12% interprogrammatic.
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