Damon Runyon Researchers

Nearly all of the FDA-approved therapies in the last decade for bladder cancer target cell surface proteins. Despite enormous progress in targeted therapy development, however, only five unique targets (out of thousands) have been explored. In addition, because current tumor targets are often also expressed on normal tissues, toxic side effects are common and can even be life-threatening. Therefore, identifying cancer-specific, targetable proteins is critical to enhancing efficacy and safety of bladder cancer drugs. In this project, Dr. Chou will utilize a new technique to identify novel drug targets from patient tumor samples, develop molecules that bind them, and engineer these molecules into cellular therapies. He will also evaluate a strategy to target a surface protein called CDCP1 and explore the role of several proteases (enzymes that break down proteins) in therapy resistance. Dr. Chou hopes that his work will reveal a new class of targetable surface proteins for bladder cancer and pave the way for future clinical trials.