Professor Ralph Buttyan
Position:
- Senior Scientist, Vancouver Prostate Centre, University of British Columbia
Credentials:
- PhD at University of Chicago
- Professor in Pathology at Columbia University
- Senior Scientist at Ordway Research Institute
Biography:
Dr Ralph Buttyan is a Senior Scientist in the Vancouver Prostate Centre and has been involved in prostate cancer research for over 28 years. He joined the Vancouver Prostate Centre from New York, USA, where he was Professor in Pathology and Urology at Columbia University and a Senior Scientist at the Ordway Research Institute. He is a Past-President of the Society of Urological Research and remains on the Executive Board.
Dr Buttyan’s research interest lies in understanding the molecular and genetic changes that enable prostate cancer cells to acquire resistance to androgen ablation (hormone) and other types of therapies.
More recently, his focus has turned to the role of developmental signalling pathways in therapeutic resistant of prostate cancer. This new work supports the ideas that cell signalling pathways that guide normal embryonic development of the prostate gland are hijacked in prostate cancer cells and become linked to the processes that drive the abnormal growth of the cancer cells and their ability to metastasize to other tissues of the body.
These abnormal embryonic signals appear to be also especially important for the acquisition of therapy resistance by prostate cancer. One potential benefit of this observation is the availability of contemporary drugs that selectively inhibit developmental signalling pathways, and Dr Buttyan’s goal is to conduct pre-clinical tests on them as therapeutics for advanced prostate cancer.
Stem Cells, Developmental Signalling, Cancer Progression, Androgen Action, Therapy Resistance, Metastasis.
