Two Foundation Grants Advance Prostate Cancer Research at Desai Sethi Urology Institute
Grants from the Elsa U. Pardee Foundation and Prostate Cancer Foundation will support studies of an understudied protein modification and a potential driver of hormone therapy resistance.
Key Takeaways
- Zhipeng Wang, Ph.D., received a $200,000, one-year grant to study allysine in prostate cancer.
- Masoud Bitaraf, M.D., received a $225,000, three-year award to investigate CYP51A1-driven resistance to hormone therapy.
- The Desai Sethi Urology Institute projects could inform future biomarker and treatment research, with additional laboratory and clinical validation.
Two foundation grants will support University of Miami Miller School of Medicine researchers studying how prostate cancer progresses and becomes resistant to treatment. The projects, led by Desai Sethi Urology Institute researchers Zhipeng Wang, Ph.D., and Masoud Bitaraf, M.D., examine an understudied protein modification and a potential mechanism of resistance to hormone therapy.
The Elsa U. Pardee Foundation has awarded Dr. Wang, assistant professor of urology and member of Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center, part of the Miller School, with a $200,000, one-year grant to investigate an understudied protein modification called allysine. Dr. Wang and colleagues will look specifically at how allysine’s regulation by the lysyl oxidase (LOX) family of enzymes contributes to prostate cancer.
“Allysine has been known for decades but has never been systematically investigated in cancer, in part because conventional tools cannot readily detect and quantify it,” Dr. Wang said. “We developed a chemical, probe-based approach that allows us to directly capture and measure allysine modifications across the entire proteome, opening a new way to study their roles in cancer.”
How Could Allysine Influence Prostate Cancer?
The research aims to uncover previously unknown mechanisms that contribute to prostate cancer progression and treatment resistance. Ultimately, allysine-regulated proteins and pathways could provide new biomarkers or therapeutic targets, particularly for advanced prostate cancers that no longer respond to androgen receptor-directed therapies.
A key strength of Dr. Wang’s work is that it integrates chemical biology with quantitative proteomics.
“Our preliminary studies have already identified 784 peptides across 568 proteins, and the new funding will allow us to extend this technology from cell models to human prostate cancer tissues,” he said. “This funding will provide critical preliminary data to establish this research direction and support larger future studies focused on new mechanisms and therapeutic opportunities in prostate cancer.”
Nima Sharifi, M.D., Desai Sethi Urology Institute scientific director, professor of urology at the Miller School and a member of Sylvester, described Dr. Wang as “a very creative chemist, biochemist and investigator who is using the tools that he has developed to make fundamental findings that are relevant for cancer and other human diseases.”
Why This Research Matters
- Advanced prostate cancers can progress even after treatments designed to block the hormones that help them grow.
- Two Miller School projects are examining different parts of that challenge: how an understudied protein modification may contribute to cancer and how CYP51A1 may help some tumors maintain androgen production during treatment.
- The findings could help researchers identify new biomarkers, therapeutic targets and treatment strategies, but both projects require further investigation before they can guide routine patient care.
How Will Researchers Test CYP51A1-Driven Resistance?
The Prostate Cancer Foundation selected Dr. Bitaraf, a post-doctoral researcher in the lab of Dr. Sharifi, for its 2026 Young Investigator Award. The three-year, $225,000 grant will fund his research investigating CYP51A1 as a predictive biomarker for dual androgen blockade in castration-resistant prostate cancer (CRPC). The work looks into the ways prostate cancer tumors escape hormone therapies such as abiraterone.
“This project builds on recent evidence generated by our lab that CYP51A1 may provide an alternative route for prostate cancer cells to sustain androgen synthesis when the usual pathway is blocked,” Dr. Bitaraf said. “CYP51A1 is amplified in approximately 17% of metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancers, suggesting that it may be especially important in a subset of patients with lethal disease.”
Dr. Bitaraf and colleagues will test whether this pathway has clinical relevance and can guide treatment decisions.
“By integrating evolutionary biology, clinical utility and spatial metabolomics, I will investigate who develops CYP51A1-driven resistance under treatment pressure, why it enables tumors to continue growing and where it is active within metastatic tumors,” he said. “The ultimate aim is to develop a practical test-and-treat strategy that identifies patients who may benefit from more targeted hormonal therapy and helps move others more quickly toward alternative treatments.”
The project follows one scientific question across multiple levels of investigation. Dr. Bitaraf will study patient samples collected before and after abiraterone exposure to ask whether treatment itself selects for CYP51A1-high tumor cells. He will then use spatial metabolomics, an advanced imaging approach, to map androgen molecules directly within metastatic tumor tissue and compare those maps with CYP51A1 expression. Finally, he will connect these biological findings to patient outcomes in a pilot clinical study.
“This design is important because it moves step by step from treatment-driven tumor evolution to direct evidence of pathway activity in human metastases to the practical question of whether a biomarker can guide therapy,” Dr. Bitaraf said. “The work also relies on multidisciplinary collaboration across clinical oncology, pathology, genomics and mass-spectrometry imaging, allowing the project to connect discoveries in the laboratory with real-world treatment decisions.”
Beyond supporting research, the 2026 PCF Young Investigator Award provides Dr. Bitaraf opportunities to engage with a national community of investigators, clinicians, advocates and patients who are working toward better outcomes in prostate cancer.
What the Awards Mean for Prostate Cancer Research
The Prostate Cancer Foundation has long fueled DSUI and Miller School prostate cancer studies, said Dr. Sharifi, who was in the first class of Prostate Cancer Foundation-funded young investigators in 2008. Dr. Wang received the award last year.
“Dr. Bitaraf is a physician-scientist whose work in prostate cancer is using essentially mechanistic insights to identify the basic mechanisms of how prostate cancer works. He is the caliber of physician-scientist who will represent the next generation of leaders in this field,” Dr. Sharifi said.
More from the Miller School of Medicine
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UHealth has completed more than 20,000 robotic-assisted surgeries, demonstrating leadership in minimally invasive surgery.
Sylvester researchers are uncovering how cancer adapts to treatment and how resistance might be anticipated and disrupted.
University of Miami researchers report that biomarkers and MRI show similar performance in predicting prostate cancer risk.
Tags: cancer research, clinical trials, Desai Sethi Urology Institute, Dr. Zhipeng Wang, genomics, metabolomics, prostate cancer, Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center