In January, Hao Nguyen, MD, PhD, was awarded a $1 million Challenge Award from the Prostate Cancer Foundation (PCF). Nguyen, 44, who holds the Goldberg-Benioff Endowed Professorship in Cancer Biology and is associate professor in UCSF’s Department of Urology, will use the funding over the course of the next two years to search for “novel therapeutic means to understanding metastatic prostate cancer,” he says. Co-PIs on the project are Peter R. Carroll, MD, MPH, Ken and Donna Derr-Chevron Distinguished Professor in Urology and Taub Family Distinguished Professor in Urology Department of Urology; and urology professor Davide Ruggero, PhD, a Helen Diller Family Endowed Chair in basic science research. Dr. Ruggero is a world-renowned expert in the role of deregulation of protein synthesis in cancer development.
Says Carroll, “Hao’s work is critical to advancing our understanding of how to reduce the burden of treatment and delay progressions of metastatic prostate cancer, which leads to 30,000 fatalities in men in the U.S. every year.”