Charaterisation and pre-clinical development of a novel dual activity anti-androgen for castration resistant prostate cancer

Biography

Dr. Mohammad Asim is a Cancer Molecular Biologist who studies molecular mechanisms that drive prostate cancer progression in order to find novel and more effective treatments. His research has primarily focussed on understanding the role of the androgen receptor signalling in prostate cancer and how it is activated in cancer leading to drug resistance. Mohammad graduated with a PhD from Justus Liebig University for his work uncovering the role of signal transduction pathways and transcriptional corepressors in regulating androgen receptor signalling in prostate cancer.

Following a postdoc in Cancer therapeutics at the University of Wisconsin, where he discovered novel anti-androgens, he took up a Senior Scientist position at the Cancer Research UK Cambridge Institute at the University of Cambridge. Here, Mohammad's ground-breaking work identified the first-ever mammalian kinase that can act as a chaperone for the androgen receptor and is a drug target. At Surrey, his work uncovered a novel synthetic lethal relationship between the androgen receptor and Poly (ADP-Ribose) Polymerase pathway which is being clinically exploited to treat castration-resistant prostate cancer (CRPC). His lab identified PDZ binding Kinase as a mediator of androgen receptor function in CRPC thus revealing the molecular mechanism underlying the failure of hormone therapy for prostate cancer. This work contributed to understanding pathways that can cause the failure of hormone/radiation therapy and can thus be exploited in developing combination approaches for effective cancer treatment. For his discoveries on a novel dual-activity anti-androgenic drug currently in development, Dr Asim was awarded a Young Investigator Award from the Prostate Cancer Foundation. In addition to his role at Surrey, Dr Asim concurrently holds a visiting scientist post at the University of Cambridge.

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