Michael Shen, PhD (Image Courtesy of the Shen Lab)

The Bladder Cancer Advocacy Network (BCAN) has awarded Professor Michael Shen, PhD, the 2018 Bladder Cancer Research Innovation Award. The honor is given to scientists whose novel, creative research has great potential to produce breakthroughs in the management of bladder cancer.  

Dr. Shen, who is professor of medicine, genetics & development, urology and systems biology at Columbia University, has used new techniques of 3D cell culture to establish “organoids” from primary bladder tumors obtained from patients. These personalized laboratory models, which the Shen lab can create in a matter of weeks, provide a new, innovative way to study the molecular mechanisms associated with drug response and drug resistance in bladder cancer patients. 

The BCAN award supports the Shen lab’s efforts in furthering their work in patient-derived bladder tumor organoids . 

“We will employ these organoid lines to examine how specific oncogenic drivers may regulate the invasiveness and metastatic ability of muscle-invasive bladder cancer (MIBC), both in cell culture and in mouse models,” says Dr. Shen. “Our goal is to use these new experimental approaches to provide molecular insights into the lethal properties of human MIBC, which will hopefully lead to improved therapeutic approaches.”

Bladder cancer is the fifth most common cancer in the United States, and the primary treatment of the disease is surgery. Overall, this new project will examine central questions of bladder cancer biology using Dr. Shen’s innovative approach involving patient-derived tumor organoids, and may provide the basis for future therapies for metastatic bladder cancer.

This is the fourth year BCAN has bestowed the Bladder Cancer Research Innovation Award; in 2015, fellow Columbia faculty member, Cory Abate-Shen, PhD, professor in the Departments of Urology, Medicine, Systems Biology and Pathology & Cell Biology, received the award for research into the epigenetic regulation of bladder cancer progression.