Arul M. Chinnaiyan

His team discovered that a majority of prostate cancers harbor gene fusions of the androgen-responsive protease TMPRSS2 with ETS transcription factors, inducing a paradigm shift for cancer biology, as well as providing a powerful new diagnostic tool and therapeutic target for prostate cancer. Previously, gene fusions were seen as primary mechanisms only of hematological malignancies and sarcomas, not of common solid tumors. Validation by multiple groups has demonstrated that 60-80% of prostate cancers harbor these TMPRSS2/ETS family fusions. Prostate cancer thus seems to occur by subversion of the androgen-regulated promoter or enhancer elements of TMPRSS2 aberrantly regulating a family of oncogenes. His team developed the popular cancer profiling bioinformatics resource Oncomine-freely available to researchers, with some 10,000 registered users worldwide-and a visualization scheme called Molecular Concepts Mapping. His lab also identified circulating autoantibodies useful for diagnosis of prostate cancer and lung cancer, and characterized AMACR, EZH2, and hepsin as prostate cancer biomarkers.