Our Mission
Prostate cancer (PCa) is among the most common cancers in the world, with an estimated 299,010 new cases and 35,250 deaths from PCa in the United States in 2024. Despite significant research advances, deaths from PCa continue to increase, confirming that continued aggressive efforts are needed. A central issue leading to continued PCa mortality is therapeutic resistance - men with advanced PCa can be successfully treated with therapies targeting androgen receptor signaling and other novel agents, but eventually resistance to all lines of therapy is universal and lethal.
The Weill Cornell Medicine (WCM) SPORE in PCa has developed and deployed critical infrastructure, scientific programs, and collaborative networks to advance the science and patient care for PCa. This application will further develop this overall approach, leveraging our expertise across the spectrum of basic and translational research, computational genomics, clinical trials, and developmental therapeutics to benefit men across the landscape of lethal PCa, by focusing our scientific efforts on the study of therapeutic resistance. We will develop novel biomarkers and treatment strategies to improve survival and quality of life for men with advanced disease.
Collaboration and Outreach
WCM and partner NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital (NYP) reach a large, diverse patient population of millions across 5 boroughs of New York City and surrounding areas. The WCM SPORE infrastructure provides biospecimen acquisition and processing pipelines, critical molecular profiling platforms and analysis, and regulatory governance. Despite this expertise and infrastructure, a major barrier is the challenge of connecting disparate datatypes across the spectrum of PCa research, linking clinical, genetic, and molecular phenotypes together, establishing novel connections between data from human PCa patients and lab-based model systems, and allowing generation and testing of novel hypotheses by diverse research teams. A key objective and mission of this WCM PCa SPORE is to increase data availability, usability, and accessibility among our PCa investigators at WCM, across the broader SPORE community, and in the field of PCa research.
We have established robust collaborative networks providing free exchange of scientific ideas, data, and biospecimens across SPORE partner institutions and the broader PCa research community.
The WCM SPORE is a major hub for paradigm-shifting translational research. We are establishing new approaches to treating PCA, which will result in improved patient survival and quality of life. Our overarching goal is to impact PCA care from initial diagnosis through management of advanced state disease using precision medicine approaches to improve current clinical care.
