Tory Govan

Prostate cancer, one of the leading causes of cancer mortality in the United States, lacks a tractable cell line that makes it amenable for study. A proper cell line remains elusive in part because of the slow-growing nature of prostate cancer cells, and several attempts at generating prostate cell types have had very low success rates. In this project, we are designing novel technology to generate a new primary prostate cancer cell line. We hypothesize that the primary prostate cancer cells require certain cytokines to grow quickly in vitro. Our strategy is to create a high-throughput cytokine array to systematically define cytokine candidates that specifically promote growth of prostate cancer patient-derived cells. The ultimate goal of this project is to build a robust pipeline for generating hundreds of prostate cancer cell lines for improving therapeutic treatments.

 

PROJECT: Building the next generation of prostate cancer cell model

Mentors: Moony Tseng and Anson Peng, Cancer program – Cancer cell line factory

 

Tory Govan

Participating in SRPG has redefined my interpretation of being a scientist. Before becoming a Broadie I did not have a thorough understanding of the medical applications of conducting scientific research. However, after working closely with the Broad SRPG staff, faculty, and my mentors in studying prostate cancer, I have seen the medical and health relevance of biomedical research. I am now eager to pursue a career as a physician-scientist.