PI Career Goals: My overall career goals are to become an independent research scientist studying the aspects of cancer initiation, progression, and/or metastasis. The training plan will enhance my career as an independent research scientist by developing my writing and speaking skills which are necessary to communicate my work in a thorough fashion. This will be accomplished by attending and presenting seminars relevant to cancer research, weekly lab meetings, and at regional or national conferences. The research plan described within this proposal will enhance my career as an independent research scientist by developing my skills in laboratory techniques critical for cancer research. With an interest in cancer progression and metastasis, I feel this research plan will help to establish myself as a contributor to this field.

Rationale and Objective: Prostate cancer is the most commonly diagnosed and second leading cause of epithelial cancer-related death in men. Therefore, much is to be learned about the growth and resistance of epithelial cancer cells to current therapeutics. One family of proteins thought to promote cancer growth and resistance to chemotherapeutics are the tyrosine kinases. This family of proteins has been implicated in every known cancer; however, targeting epithelial cancer cells with single tyrosine kinase inhibitors has been modest, with only a short increase in survival. Thus, we need a better understanding of the cell signaling events that are utilized by prostate cancer cells during advanced and metastatic disease. Consequently, the objective of this proposal will aim to identify and investigate the relevance of global tyrosine kinases expression in prostate cancer progression and metastasis.

Applicability of the Proposed Research: This research is aimed to treat patients with any form of prostate cancer, ranging from organ-confined disease to metastasis. In conjunction with the aims of this proposal, we aspire to derive better treatment strategies using combinations of tyrosine kinase inhibitors which are more applicable to clinical disease. With the identification of new targets, we hope to enhance and increase the patient's overall well-being and survival, respectively. As with all chemotherapeutics, normal cells within the patient are also inadvertently affected. This unwanted side effect could be reduced if we can identify more potent combinations of tyrosine kinase inhibitors, allowing us to reduce the amount of therapeutics to be administered. Within this proposal, if we identify tyrosine kinases where the therapeutics currently are at hand, new combinations of tyrosine kinase inhibitors may be available for clinical trials in prostate cancer patients within five years. The proposed study will help to advance the field of prostate cancer research by providing more insight into better treatment options and strategy for administration of tyrosine kinase inhibitors in patients. Using this approach, where we can investigate the global tyrosine kinase profile in prostate cancer and metastasis, we will better be able to increase the quality of life and survival in these patients.