Dr Rayzel Fernandes (Centre student member and scholarship awardee) graduated in 2020 and is now completing a post-doctoral fellowship in the UK. Rayzel along with supervisor Associate Professor Luke Selth and colleagues, has published her PhD findings in Cell Reports.
Neuroendocrine prostate cancer is the term given to prostate cancer which becomes resistant to hormonal therapies and then progress to a untreatable lethal stage. Tumor plasticity allows the cancer cells to adapt and continue to grow by evolving into different cell types that no longer respond to the therapy.
MicroRNAs are evolutionary stable small single-stranded non-coding RNA molecule which act to silence RNA and regulate gene expression. The study found the microRNA miR-194 enhances plasticity in prostate cancer by binding to a suite of genes involved in cell plasticity. This includes FOXA1, known to be important for maintaining the healthy prostate epithelial cell type.
miRN-194 may therefore serve as a useful drug target to prevent prostate cancer progressing to a lethal neuroendocrine type.