The Prostate Cancer Research Program recognizes that investigators are the driving force behind clinical prostate cancer advancements of the future.
Prostate cancer is the most diagnosed cancer and is the second most common cause of cancer-related death for men in the United States. Since men make up nearly 80% of the armed forces, prostate cancer is a critical health care concern for Service Members and Veterans.
“For most men, the fear of getting prostate cancer feels like a ticking timebomb; rationalizing that if they live long enough, they have a fairly good chance of getting it,” retired U.S. Army Lt. Col. William “Bill” Mahr, PCRP consumer programmatic panel member in fiscal 2024, said.
The PCRP aims to foster the next generation of researchers by offering award mechanisms to support meritorious research performed by early-career investigators or new investigators in a given field under the guidance of one or more mentors. These funding opportunities are building or strengthening research capacity by enhancing the ability of individuals, groups and institutions to perform research in the long-term.
LEARNING THE LATEST THROUGH MENTORSHIP AND COLLABORATION
In fiscal 2024, PCRP received $110 million in congressional appropriations and offered six funding opportunities, three of which focused on expanding prostate cancer research capacity: Early Investigator Research Award, Physician Research Award, and Idea Development Award with a new investigator option.
Across all the program’s funding opportunities, the PCRP encourages investigators to address identified priorities in the research field, such as improving the quality of life for those impacted by prostate cancer, developing new treatments, improving existing treatment strategies, reducing health disparities and increasing understanding of prostate cancer disease progression.
“With PCRP funding, many young and established investigators have opened new areas of research, tested novel high-risk ideas, and developed cutting-edge technologies that have advanced tremendously the field of prostate cancer research,” Carlos A. Casiano, Ph.D., PCRP peer reviewer for fiscal years 2021 through 2024, said.
For example, in fiscal 2009, the PCRP awarded a Physician Research Training Award, now called the Physician Research Award, led by Felix Feng, M.D., under the guidance of a strong team of mentors providing interactive, lecture and clinical trainings. The award led to the identification of biomarkers in patient tumors as possible targeted treatments for prostate cancer.
PCRP’s researcher development award helped lay the groundwork for Feng’s transition to an independent investigator, resulting in more than $1.5 million in follow-on funding from other sources, supported in whole or in part by work accomplished through the initial PCRP-funded award.
Between fiscal 2015 and 2021, PCRP funded five additional awards led by Feng as an independent, established prostate cancer investigator. These awards identified cellular mechanisms involved in the progression of prostate cancer from localized to metastatic disease and a rationale for a new treatment strategy focused on inhibiting DNA-dependent protein kinase, an enzyme associated with metastatic disease progression. In addition, Feng’s PCRP-funded research led to the development of a non-invasive liquid biopsy to identify patients with aggressive forms of cancer based on detection of cancer biomarkers in blood.
Feng also collaborated with other researchers through the PCRP-funded Prostate Cancer Clinical Trials Consortium.
COMING TOGETHER TO EXPAND RESEARCH ABILITIES
PCRP’s approach to building research capacity cultivates a new generation of prostate cancer researchers who bring different perspectives and ideas to the field. Young researchers make significant contributions to prostate cancer research and patient care, and after leading PCRP-supported research, mentor the next generation of researchers.
Under direct or co-mentorship by Feng at the University of California, San Francisco, PCRP funded eight awards between fiscal 2015 and fiscal 2023 that led to young investigators conducting innovative and impactful research to understand the genetic mechanisms that ignite and drive prostate cancer.
“It turns out that a mentorship relationship is a two-way relationship in the sense that I’ve mentored a lot of people, but I think I learned more from my mentees than they learned from me,” Feng said.
A fiscal 2016 Early Investigator Research Award led by Hui Li, Ph.D., sought to identify genes, like PLUTO-201, that may contribute to aggressive metastatic prostate cancer and could be a potential treatment target.
A fiscal 2020 Early Investigator Research Award led by Lisa Chesner, Ph.D., focused on understanding how increasing levels of surface molecules that help the immune system recognize cancer, called major histocompatibility complex, could improve patients’ response to immunotherapy.
An ongoing fiscal 2023 Physical Research Award led by Xiaolin Zhu, M.D., Ph.D., explores how radiation treatment can stimulate patients’ immune systems and which form of radiation most powerfully activates the immune response.
SPEAKING OUT TO CULTIVATE NEW IDEAS AND PERSPECTIVES
“My next hope is that in thirty years from now, we can either cure all cancers or find a way to treat all cancers so that patients live with cancer, but don’t die of their cancer,” Feng said. “I do recognize that’s the holy grail, but to be honest with you, why are you in science if you don’t aim for the holy grail?”
Feng, who also served as a PCRP peer reviewer in fiscal 2012, died in 2024.
“Dr. Feng touched all aspects of the prostate cancer research and patient communities, aided in part by the PCRP,” Michael Hall, Ph.D., a CDMRP program manager, said. “His death was terribly unfortunate and too soon.”
| Date Taken: | 02.24.2025 |
| Date Posted: | 02.24.2025 14:08 |
| Story ID: | 491390 |
| Location: | FORT DETRICK, MARYLAND, US |
| Web Views: | 43 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, CDMRP FUNDS MENTORED SCIENCE TO EXPAND CAPACITY FOR IMPACTFUL PROSTATE CANCER RESEARCH, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
