Binjie Luo

Prostate cancer (PCa) is one of the most common cancers and the second most common cause of cancer-related death in men worldwide, with ~ 1100000 new cases diagnosed and ~ 360000 deaths every year. FOXA2, also known as hepatocyte nuclear factor 3-beta (HNF-3B), is a transcription factor that plays an important role during development and in mature tissues and diseases, and it was found specifically expressed in neuroendocrine prostate cancer (NEPC), which has a poor prognosis in clinical observation. Understanding the molecular mechanisms of FOXA2 in NEPC is critical for improving therapeutic interventions for poor prognosis NEPC patients. Our research interest is mainly to identify if the FOXA2 can harbor some the risky susceptibility alleles that modulating chromatin binding and lead to NEPC. Combing our ChIP-seq results, RNA-seq results and clinical cohorts results to find the FOXA2 possible clinical target genes driving NEPC. And to define how the FOXA2 cooperate with other signal pathways or TFs thus may regulate some oncogenic and tumor suppressive genes and pathways contributing to NEPC susceptibility, initiation and development.