Mary-Chelsea Chong-San

• MSc Biomedical Sciences
• Developing novel fluorescent CRISPR approaches for understanding androgen receptor biology in prostate cancer

Prostate cancer (PC) is the most common urological disease in men. Most early-stage cancer, if not cured (through surgery or radiotherapy) will eventually progress to a metastatic disease. At this stage, therapeutic intervention is used to repress the proliferative Androgen receptor (AR) signalling axis, which when activated stimulates growth and survival. However, after a median time of 18 months most patients present with resistance under these therapies. In 30% of resistance cases, PC is resistant to Phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase (PI3K) signalling pathway inhibition, PI3K is another pathway by which prostate cancer cells can grow under. PI3K cascade reactions leads to the activation of AKT a survival protein. However, there is now growing evidence that Serum- and glucocorticoid-induced protein kinase 1 (SGK1), another PI3K signalling effector, also conveys PI3K inhibition resistance. SGK1 has been shown to be increased upon AR activation and is activated through stimulation of PI3K. Resistant cells have also been shown to possess higher levels of SGK1. The aim of the project is to validate the underlying effects of SGK1 inhibition on PC cell lines and ultimately demonstrating its implications in stopping growth of PC.

Funding source: Newcastle University

Project supervisor: Dr Luke Gaughan