Exosomes Research
Hypoxia in primary prostate tumors is associated with metastasis, treatment failure and mortality; however, the precise underlying mechanisms remain unknown. In this regard, our completed studies strongly support the role of exosomes in mediating the hypoxia-induced prostate cancer cells invasiveness and metastasis.
We have identified that hypoxic prostate cancer cells exosomes play a critical role in the preparation of pre-metastatic niches at specific distant organ sites. As hypoxia is an early event during prostate carcinogenesis, it is pertinent that pre-metastatic niches preparations start earlier than actual metastasis.
We believe that a better understanding of pre-metastatic niches would offer novel opportunities to prevent prostate cancer metastasis.
Cancer Chemoprevention Research
Cancer is a major health issue. Cancers such as glioma, pancreatic, and lung have extremely poor survival rates; and currently available therapeutic measures are costly, painful and are rarely curative.
In other cancers, such as prostate, breast and colon, with existing screening programs, the five-year survival rate is quite high. However, due to higher incidences, the mortality and morbidity burden of these cancers is enormous. Therefore, there is need for additional non-toxic and alternative strategies to treat and, ideally, prevent cancer.
We could exploit the facts the initiated cells take decades to develop into a clinically significant disease, and cancer cells exhibit significant molecular alterations that are distinct from normal cells.
Besides the genetic and epigenetic changes, tumor microenvironment plays an important role in determining whether initiated cells will remain dormant or advanced into a malignancy. Therefore, tumor microenvironment could also be a target for cancer prevention and intervention.
One of our research goals is to discover and validate non-toxic agents for cancer prevention/ intervention with mechanistic evidences and target authentication in pre-clinical and clinical studies.