Prostate Cancer Research Group

The development of new drugs and therapeutic strategies for advanced prostate cancer is the main objectives of our Group. Our team combines the conduction of clinical trials with molecular correlative studies, following a bench-to-bedside-and-back approach to research.

We aim to integrate insights into clinical research, molecular biology, genomics, transcriptomics, computational sciences and clinical data toward developing precision medicine strategies for prostate cancer patients. To do so, our team comprises renowned medical oncologists providing care for patients with prostate cancer, biomedical scientists with expertise in cancer biology, genomics and transcriptomics, bioinformatics and liquid biopsy, and clinical data experts.

To that end, we have set up a platform for acquiring longitudinal biospecimens from patients with advanced prostate cancer, both tumor tissue as well as liquid biopsies, that can be used to investigate the evolving features of disease, as well as generate patient-derived laboratory models of advanced prostate cancer that we can leverage to investigate new therapeutic strategies at the bench.

Our clinical trial portfolio covers the disease continuum, with a focus on early phase trials of new compounds and on biology-driven therapeutic options. Moreover, investigator-initiated clinical studies are central to our research strategy, as a platform for correlative studies that can optimize the drug development pathway for prostate cancer patients. We are currently the central laboratory for two academic multi-center clinical trials and serve as the sample repository for IRONMAN; an international effort to build a large bank of clinical data and biospecimens from patients with metastatic prostate cancer.

The main lines of research are: 1) understanding how prostate cancers adapt to exposure to systemic therapies, with a particular focus on the cell cycle and DNA damage response regulation; 2) the development of novel tissue and liquid biopsy molecular characterization approaches for optimal patient stratification; and 3) to define prognostic and predictive biomarkers that can guide more precise treatment decisions. To those ends, we study in-vitro and in-vivo models, including patient-derived xenografts (PDX) from the patients participating in our clinical studies. We study genomics and transcriptomics of clinical biospecimens, with a focus on ctDNA and tumor-derived extracellular vesicles, and we leverage in-house and publicly available clinic-genomics databases.

We have also launched HOPE-Prostate, a collaborative project with the SOLTI Group and the different prostate cancer medical societies in Spain, focused on empowering patients with metastatic prostate cancer to undergo molecular testing. To facilitate this, we developed an interactive platform that integrates next-generation sequencing (NGS) of tumor samples and liquid biopsy data with patient self-reported clinical data. As part of our initiative, we study patient perspective on the value of NGS analysis. This feedback helps us understand their perception of the treatments recommended by a panel of specialists. This study is endorsed by the Asociación Española Contra el Cáncer – AECC (Spanish Association Against Cancer) and the Movember Foundation. In the first year of the project, we recruited over 100 patients.

Our research is generously funded by grants from the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) Congressionally Directed Medical Research Programs (CDMRP), the Spanish Ministry of Health, CRIS Cancer Foundation, AECC, Fundación FERO, and ”la Caixa” Foundation. We also have joint projects with biotech and pharmaceutical industry partners for the development of novel therapeutic strategies.

To more rapidly advance the field, we believe in team science. We therefore participate in several collaborations that pool resources and combine cross-border expertise across several different research teams and groups.

In summary, our research integrates different modalities of clinical and translational research aiming to improve the outcomes for patients with prostate cancer.