Investigating resistance to PI3K pathway inhibitors to combat castration-resistant prostate cancer

Exploring a new avenue of treatment for late-stage prostate cancer.

Primary prostate cancer organoid — A primary prostate cancer organoid

About

While the outcome for men diagnosed with prostate cancer confined to the prostate is generally very good, patients with late-stage prostate cancer have a worse prognosis, which reflects a poor response to hormone-based therapies. Thus, there is a clinical unmet need to identify new therapeutic approaches to treat patients with prostate cancer that have become resistant to standard therapies.

Aims

This project explores a new avenue of treatment for late-stage prostate cancer that enhances our ability to switch off the PI3K pathway, a set of signals that instruct prostate cells to grow uncontrollably when resistance to hormone-based therapies occurs.

We also hope to learn more about:

the therapeutic benefit of targeting the PI3K pathway at multiple nodes for the treatment of prostate cancer
which patients are likely to respond to this treatment by identifying biomarkers that can predict for response, to better tailor treatments for individual patients
how prostate cancer cells and the surrounding tumour microenvironment communicate to evade treatment.