Unmet Need
Prostate cancer is considered the most common type of cancer in men with approximately 249,000 new cases and an estimated 34,130 deaths in 2021 (see ACS). Prostate cancer treatment is dependent on tumor staging with early stage intervention including surgery or radiotherapy and later stage management by androgen deprivation therapy (see Uptodate). Despite such treatments, prostate cancer deprived of androgens can progress to castrate resistant prostate cancer and require secondary therapeutic options such new lines of therapies targeting the androgen receptor pathway or a transition to chemotherapy. Further understanding of resistance mechanisms in prostate cancer require advances in available research materials. Therefore, there is a strong need for the development of biomaterials at the point of therapeutic resistance that may benefit the treatment of prostate cancer.
Technology Overview
Johns Hopkins researchers have developed cell line models for studying the function and therapeutic targeting of androgen receptor (AR) and the truncated androgen receptor splice variant-7 (AR-V7). These cell lines express both AR and the AR-V7, as AR-V7 is implicated in resistance to therapies that target AR, mimicking the expression pattern observed in patient specimens.
Stage of Development
Experimental data is available.
Publication
Zhu Y, et al. Oncogene, 39(45):6935-6949, 2020
