Bothwell Prize Winner for 2023 is announced: Prostate Cancer Diagnostics from Liquid Biopsy Sampling

View this year’s Bothwell prize announcement here.

This year’s Bothwell prize winner is a paper from Zhao et al (with senior author Dr. Josh Lang, Department of Human Oncology), “A clinical-grade liquid biomarker detects neuroendocrine differentiation in prostate cancer”.   The committee chose this paper because the technique it describes could quickly impact the treatment of men living with prostate cancer.  Although this cancer is often well-controlled by anti-androgen therapies, tumor cells can change and evolve into a fast-growing cell type that is non-responsive to this therapy (called neuroendocrine prostate cancer).  Early detection of this transition is key.  This paper describes the development of a liquid biopsy assay that is sufficiently sensitive and accurate to diagnose this transition using genetic testing.  It relies on a nanotechnology developed in the Department of Biomedical Engineering and complements other technologies emerging from the Carbone Cancer Center. This assay is non-invasive (it does not require biopsy specimens) and could become a routine standard of care.

Zhao, S. G., J. M. Sperger, J. L. Schehr, R. R. McKay, H. Emamekhoo, A. Singh, Z. D. Schultz, R. M. Bade, C. N. Stahlfeld, C. S. Gilsdorf, C. I. Hernandez, S. K. Wolfe, R. D. Mayberry, H. M. Krause, M. Bootsma, K. T. Helzer, N. Rydzewski, H. Bakhtiar, Y. Shi, G. Blitzer, C. E. Kyriakopoulos, D. Kosoff, X. X. Wei, J. Floberg, N. Sethakorn, M. Sharifi, P. M. Harari, W. Huang, H. Beltran, T. K. Choueiri, H. I. Scher, D. E. Rathkopf, S. Halabi, A. J. Armstrong, D. J. Beebe, M. Yu, K. E. Sundling, M. E. Taplin and J. M. Lang (2022). “A clinical-grade liquid biomarker detects neuroendocrine differentiation in prostate cancer.” J Clin Invest 132(21).

Learn more about the Bothwell prize and the award recipients here.