Junior Faculty

2007/2008

Colm Morrissey, PhD is a senior post-doctoral fellow in the Department of Urology at the University of Washington, soon to begin the third year of his fellowship (effective 8/1/06) under the mentorship of Dr. Robert Vessella. Dr. Morrissey did most of his graduate work on apoptosis and prostate cancer at the W. Alton Jones Cell Science Center in Lake Placid, New York, under the mentorship of Dr. Martin Tenniswood. Dr. Morrissey accompanied Dr. Tenniswood in his relocation to the University of Notre Dame, where he completed his graduate work investigating the effects of green tea in the aging rat prostate. After completing his PhD, he stayed on for another year of teaching and research. He subsequently accepted a post-doctoral fellowship at the Mater Misericordiae University Hospital in Dublin, Ireland. He worked under Professor John Fitzpatrick and the laboratory headed by Dr. Bill Watson. There he worked on the influence of phytoestrogens on apoptosis in prostate cancer. After three years in Ireland, Dr. Morrissey was recruited to the University of Washington by Dr. Vessella for a second post-doctoral fellowship. Over the last three years, he has worked on prostate cancer bone metastasis. The past 18 months have been supported by the SPORE Career Development Award for postdoctoral fellows with outstanding potential. This work includes laser capture microdissection and gene expression arrays of prostate cancer metastases, co-culture systems to study the interactions of prostate cancer cells with osteoblasts and osteoclasts, intra-tibial prostate cancer models, and the pathology of late stage disease. Dr. Morrissey's efforts have been very successful. He reported his results at several national meetings. He has published, one review article, two first author and two middle author papers resulting from this work, and currently has two more papers in preparation. Dr. Morrissey has accepted a position as an acting assistant professor in the UW Urology Department focusing on prostate cancer bone metastasis effective 7/1/2008.

David Qian, PhD graduate from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in 2002. Subsequently, between 2002 and 2006, he completed postdoctoral training at Kimmel Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins, where he specialized in prostate cancer targeted therapy, and drug development. In 2006, he was promoted to the faculty rank, and continued his research of tumor hypoxia and angiogenesis in the laboratory of Dr. Gregg Semenza at Johns Hopkins Institute of Cell Engineering. He joined OHSU in July 2007 as an Assistant Professor of Medicine in the division of Hematology Medical Oncology under the mentorship of Dr. Tomasz Beer. His current research includes 1) the identification and characterization of molecular signatures associated with prostate cancer progression and therapy-related drug resistance. 2) Investigate the biological functions of androgen receptor associated histone demethylase JMJD1A and JMJD1C during prostate cancer oncogenesis and therapy. 3) The epigenetics of endothelial cell biology and angiogenesis during solid tumor progression, which involves the activation, proliferation and maturation of endothelial cells.

Alan So, MD, was a SPORE fellow in Vancouver and is now an Assistant Professor in the Department of Urologic Sciences at the University of British Columbia and Research Scientist at the Prostate Centre at Vancouver General Hospital. Dr. So's current research focuses on the study of development of novel therapeutics for bladder cancer and determination of the functional role of GLI1/2 in the progression of prostate cancer to its lethal stage of androgen independence. During his post-doctoral fellowship he published more than 10 peer-reviewed papers. He is a recipient of many awards, including the Vancouver General Hospital Foundation's "In It For Life" Clinician Scientist Award, an ASCO "Young Scientist Award", and a prestigious Michael Smith Foundation Post-doctoral Fellowship Award. He has characterized the functional role of different survival genes (including clusterin and Hsp27) in different tumor models (prostate, breast, lung, and bladder) in cancer progression. He is active in clinical trials across Canada and is a member of National Cancer Institute of Cancer GU Clinical Trials Group and Canadian Uro-Oncology Group.

Jennifer Wu, PhD, received her PhD in Molecular and Cell Biology from the University of British Columbia in 1999. She subsequently completed a post-doctoral fellowship in tumor-immunology at the Fred Hutchison Cancer Research Center under the direction of Dr. Thomas Spies. During that period of time, Dr. Wu studied the role of the NK cell as part of the innate immune system for cancer prevention. She was a key player in defining the role of the NKG2D/mic system for prevention of cancer. Her work appeared in Nature Medicine. In 2002 she joined Dr. Plymate's lab as a research instructor in the Department of Medicine at the University of Washington. In 2005, She was appointed as an Assistant Research Professor in the Department of Medicine. She applied her work on the NK system to prostate cancer and published a paper in the prestigious Journal of Clinical Investigation, demonstrating this system to be active in human prostate cancer. Her work has crossed the boundaries of basic science and translational medicine.She subsequently received a KO1 award from the NCI to continue her work on the immunology of prostate cancer. In addition, she has received two DOD-New Idea awards. Earlier in her prostate work she was aided by two PNW SPORE Pilot Projects. Recently, she received a PNW Pilot support for study inflammation in prostate tumorigeneisis. She is an active member of the Program in Prostate Cancer at FHCRC/UW and has been solicited multiple-times as a member of DOD study sections on tumor immunology. She has been actively collaborating with other investigators and published several papers in Clinical Cancer Research and one in Am. J. of Physiology. She recently submitted two manuscripts to Peer-reviewed Journals and one patent application for consideration of publication.

Evan Yu, MD, is an Associate Professor of Medicine at the University of Washington, Department of Medicine and an Associate Member of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. He received training in a clinical environment and also a basic science arena studying cancer biology at Harvard Medical School and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. This provided him with the foundation of scientific knowledge and experience to proceed as a physician-investigator, focusing on translational efforts to test novel therapeutics and discover unique cancer-related biomarkers. His approach to biomarkers includes serum, tissue, and imaging approaches. Dr. Yu is collaborates with Dr. David Mankoff of Nuclear Medicine, to evaluate PET scans with novel radiotracers as prognostic, predictive, and response biomarkers. He is expanding his imaging focus to include magnetic resonance spectroscopy as a potential prostate cancer biomarker. He is also testing multiple novel agents that target multiple prostate cancer pathways involved in bone metabolism, angiogenesis, and apoptosis. His overall goal is to discover novel biomarkers with predictive clinical value that can help guide treatment and aid in the development of novel therapeutics for patients with prostate cancer.

2006 and Prior

Norm Greenberg, PhD, is internationally known for his work to characterize the initiation, progression, and metastasis of spontaneous prostate cancer utilizing novel genetically engineered mouse (GEM) model systems. Working with a small team of collaborators Dr. Greenberg was first to develop an expression system to enable genetic perturbation studies in the prostate that created a series of transgenic and conditional GEM systems including the well known TRAMP prostate cancer mouse model and derivative cell lines. His large group was recruited to FHCRC from Baylor College of Medicine in 2004 with the support of the Pacific Northwest Prostate Cancer SPORE. He has become a vital senior member of our prostate group, both scientifically and administratively. He received a CDP grant from the SPORE to study the role of resveratrol in prostate cancer prevention and more recently has a pilot project to identify prostate cancer stem cells using his GEM systems. While his research has focused on the role of steroid and peptide hormones during the initiation, progression and metastogenesis of prostate cancer and emergence of the hormone refractory phenotype, since joining FHCRC he has pioneered our efforts to further develop non-invasive imaging for diagnosis and pharmacodynamic research, and in development of new promising prostate cancer compounds using GEM models. Dr. Greenberg's lab serves as an important vehicle for the transfer of research ideas from bedside to bench and also from bench to bedside.

Daniel Lin, MD, received his MD from Vanderbilt University and completed his residency at the University of Washington in Seattle before completing his urologic oncology training at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, New York City. He was recruited back to UW/FHCRC with the help of institutional and SPORE CaP resources. Dr. Lin immediately received research support from the American Foundation for Urologic Disease (AFUD) to define the role of a novel prostate-specific protein, Prostate-Specific Dehydrogenase/Reductase 1, in prostate cancer. These studies led to the discovery that PSDR1 was a retinaldehyde reductase that is involved in retinoid homeostasis. (J Biol Chem 277:28909-15, 2002.). Subsequently, Dr. Lin assumed co-PI of Dr. Stanford's SPORE Project 1 with the departure of Dr. David Penson. Dr. Lin also was co-PI on a project funded from the SPORE DRP (Serum and Tissue Expression of the Immune Stimulatory Molecule as a Biomarker for Prostate Cancer). Later, Drs. Lin and Montgomery developed and obtained funding for a 30-site, phase III randomized study of adjuvant chemotherapy vs. standard of care for patients with high-risk prostate cancer after prostatectomy (VA Cooperative Study Protocol #553). This study was initiated in April 2006. Dr. Lin also collaborates with Dr. Bremner's laboratory in the Department of Medicine examining intraprostatic androgens in several randomized clinical trials of androgen deprivation and testosterone replacement therapy, resulting in two publications and others in preparation. Dr. Lin has several ongoing collaborations with Fred Hutchinson investigators, mainly focused on the role of diet and nutritional supplement use on prostate carcinogenesis, specifically studying the molecular effects of these interventions in human studies.

Bruce Montgomery, MD, received his MD from Duke University and completed his residency at Brigham and Women¹s Hospital in Boston, before fellowship training at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. Before joining the Program in Prostate Cancer Research (PPCR), Dr. Montgomery received research support from the VA and an American Society of Clinical Oncology Young Investigator's Award to define mechanisms of transformation by mutants of the epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR). He was persuaded to change his career to clinical trials and specifically in prostate cancer and was recruited to be a major part of our multidisciplinary prostate cancer clinic and program in prostate cancer research of the FHCRC and UW. Dr. Montgomery attends and directs research in the UW multidisciplinary clinic and also directs the VA multidisciplinary GU clinic 1.5 days per week. Areas which have been developed by Dr. Montgomery while supported by the SPORE career development are projects involving both chemotherapy and hormonal therapy in prostate cancer. Dr. Montgomery developed the phase III adjuvant study VA Cooperative Studies Program #553, Chemotherapy after Prostatectomy (CAP) with Dr. Dan Lin. This is a 30 center, phase III randomized study of adjuvant chemotherapy vs. standard of care for patients with high risk prostate cancer after prostatectomy. Dr. Montgomery has developed and is running three neoadjuvant studies prior to prostatectomy through the UWMC and VA hospital, all of which are primarily translational studies with tissue endpoints. These studies include a neoadjuvant study of androgen deprivation with IMC-A12 antibody to the insulin-like growth factor receptor prior to prostatectomy, and he is collaborating on this project with Drs. Stephen Plymate, James Dean, and Bill Ellis to further define the role of IGFR blockade in optimizing killing of prostate cancer. This study is a component of SPORE project 4. Dr. Montgomery is clinical PI of a phase II randomized study of the use of combined androgen suppression prior to prostatectomy in patients with intermediate to high-risk prostate cancer (UWMC and VA study), which is a component of the current SPORE application. Dr. Montgomery is also the clinical PI for a neoadjuvant study of the histone deacetylase inhibitor SAHA with androgen deprivation prior to prostatectomy. This is a DOD and intraSPORE project headed by Dr. Howard Scher of Memorial Sloan-Kettering. Dr. Montgomery has received funding with Dr. Ken Russell of Radiation Oncology for a neoadjuvant study of the 17,20 lyase inhibitor abiraterone prior to radiation therapy. This study will define means of optimizing suppression of intracrine androgen production by prostate cancer to improve radiation effect and treat micrometastatic disease. This study is funded by the Kuni Foundation. As co-mentor with Dr. Peter Nelson for Dr. Elahe Mostaghel, Dr. Montgomery provides guidance for her National Cancer Institute K23 award. He continues to serve as an ad-hoc reviewer for NCI and DOD study sections and acts as Co-PI on Department of Defense and NIH proposals. Dr. Montgomery collaborates with Drs. Vessella, Mostaghel and Nelson on the definition of intraprostatic production of androgens in human prostate xenograft models and testing preclinical models for interrupting androgen signaling. Dr. Montgomery will act as the clinical investigator on the SPORE projects directed by Drs. Plymate and Nelson involving analysis of the ability to interrupt androgen signaling in prostate cancer.

Ulrike Peters, PhD, is an Assistant Member in the Cancer Prevention Program at the FHCRC, with a joint appointment at the Department of Epidemiology at the University of Washington since May 2004. She is trained as a nutritional epidemiologist (University of Kiel, Germany and University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) and received additional training in genetic epidemiology during her post-doctoral fellowship at the Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics, NCI. Her research interest is primarily in nutritional prevention of prostate and colorectal cancers, with a focus on molecular and genetic epidemiology. Her studies focus on the impact of common variations in genes of nutritional pathways, either alone or in combination with diet (gene-diet interactions), on risk of prostate and colorectal cancers using candidate gene and genome-wide association studies. In addition to questionnaire data, she aims to applying molecular tools to assess dietary exposures and intermediate biomarkers into epidemiological studies. During her post-doctoral fellowship, Dr. Peters became increasingly aware of the limited understanding of the etiology of prostate cancer, along with the possibility that nutritional factors may play an important role in prostate cancer prevention. However, opportunities to study prostate cancer only became available towards the end of her fellowship. The multitude and concentrated research in prostate cancer at FHCRC was an important criterion for her decision to join our center. She received a SPORE pilot grant in 2004 to explore the usability of selenoenzymes mRNA expression in prostate tissue in existing epidemiological studies. This pilot study supported her successful application for a Transition Career Development Award (K22) in Cancer Prevention, Control, Behavior and Population Sciences, which she received on the first submission. Furthermore, Dr. Peters was able to secure funding to continue her work on selenium, vitamin D and calcium in colorectal cancer as well as a genome-wide association study through two R01s and one R03. She is the PI on all three grants.

	Junior Faculty
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