Genomic correlates of aggressive prostate cancer: Revisiting the role for MYC in tumorigenesis and recurrence

RICHARD REBELLO
SUPER-NEXT project manager
Postdoctoral Researcher
Rare Disease Oncogenomics Laboratory

Stratifying prostate cancer by risk group is useful to appropriately intensifying treatment to individuals with high likelihood of recurrence. Gains of the 8q locus in prostate cancer is a biomarker for early cancer recurrence and associates with high-risk prostate cancer, but counterintuitively it does not associate with high MYC expression or activity.

Dr Rebello discusses work to explore the molecular correlates of this group to decipher what drives an aggressive phenotype in these high-risk men as well as efforts to understand molecular vulnerabilities in pre-clinical models. Taken together these data indicate a rationale for identifying drivers in Chr8q-amplification positive prostate cancers, as well as more accurately typing MYC dependence to prognosticate risk.

Dr Richard Rebello is a postdoctoral researcher in the Rare Disease Oncogenomics group, under Richard Tothill and is currently the project manager for the SUPER-NEXT clinical genomics study for Cancer of unknown primary. Richard completed his PhD in 2017 at Monash University and undertook a postdoc with Robert Bristow in Manchester, UK to study rare variant prostate cancer aetiology and biology. He recently returned to Australia and maintains research interests in prostate cancer studying the progression of high risk prostate cancer.