Dr. Ping Mu: AJA Foundation's 2017 PCF Young Investigator Award Recipient
The Prostate Cancer Foundation (PCF) accelerates prostate cancer research through its Young Investigator Awards (YI) program which provides 3-year research grants to the most promising “next generation” young scientists.
The AJA Foundation is proud of its support of PCF YI, Dr. Ping Mu, PhD who earned his YI award as a postdoctoral fellow in the lab of his mentor and fellow PCF-funded scientist, Dr. Charles Sawyers, at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York.
A native of China, Dr. Mu came to the United States to further his research, going on to earn a PhD in Biomedical Sciences (cancer biology) from Cornell Medical College and is currently an assistant professor in the department of Molecular Biology at University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center.
Dr. Mu’s early YI funded research as well as his current research focus on the mechanisms of resistance to anti-cancer therapy and novel therapeutic approaches to overcome that resistance. Dr. Mu conducted an in vivo library screen based on shRNA that identified several candidate genes that confer resistance and possibly identify new biomarkers.
“PCF’s Young Investigator Award was really critical for me to carry on my research, because for a junior investigator it’s relatively hard to get financial support for research. PCF’s YI awards specifically filled this gap by supporting my research without my being an established scientist or having a very long record or reputation yet, for work that will prove very useful for patients,” explains Mu.
Dr. Mu’s paper on his research has recently been officially accepted by Cancer Cell, one of the top journals in the cancer field. And Dr. Mu was recently selected as the 2020 NextGen Star Award receipt of AACR (American Association of Cancer Research) for his work.
Dr. Mu is proof that YI awards are game-changing investments in human capital that attract and retain the brightest young scientific talent among recently graduated PhDs and MDs. These exceptional, early career scientists keep the field of prostate cancer research dynamic with fresh ideas, pioneering the new biotechnologies that will save the lives of current and future prostate cancer patients. Even better, advances in genomics and precision medicine are allowing research discoveries from PCF YIs to provide benefits in the treatment of more than 70 other forms of cancer, including breast cancer, colon cancer and lung cancers.
