Grant: Project - PA: Cancer Prevention and Early Detection of Hard to Treat Cancers

The well-known risk factors of prostate cancer are ethnicity and family history. However, inheritance of the altered genes alone is not sufficient to cause disease. Old age is another risk factor that contributes to cancer development through increasing the interaction between the inherited susceptibility genes and environmental risk factors such as unhealthy diet, sedentary lifestyle, infections and exposure to carcinogens. These environmental factors contribute to cancer development by promoting inflammation. SOCS1, a protein that controls inflammation is inactivated in advanced prostate cancer. To test if SOCS1 is crucial to control inflammation, we have generated a mouse that lacks the SOCS1 gene in the prostate. This mouse shows pre-cancerous changes in the prostate. We will use this mouse strain to understand how the different environmental factors (fatty diet, bacterial pathogens, carcinogens) promote prostate cancer. This knowledge could help in formulating recommendations for prostate cancer prevention.