About 1 in 8 American men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer in their lifetime, and 1 in 44 will die of the disease. While early detection and treatment have cut the mortality rate by about half over the last 30 years, it remains the second-leading cause of cancer death in American men, behind only lung cancer, according to the American Cancer Society. This is largely because late-stage and aggressive forms of prostate cancer are not responding to standard treatments, with a median life expectancy of three years after diagnosis.
To address this challenge, the U.S. Department of Defense has awarded a four-year, $2.1 million grant to a research team led by Neil Lin, an associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering and bioengineering at the UCLA Samueli School of Engineering. The funding will support a new approach merging genetic testing, functional drug-sensitivity testing and advanced computer modeling into a single system for guiding prostate cancer therapy.
Lin’s Mechanobioengineering Lab at UCLA Samueli has incorporated advances in AI into its research on cancer screening, diagnosis and treatment strategies. The group has also developed 3D tissue-engineering platforms to better assess potential therapies.
