Chia-Yi Chu

About Chia-Yi Chu

• An unmet medical need is the control of metastases of prostate cancer that cause the lethal form of this disease.
• Dr. Chu has discovered metastasis-initiating prostate cancer cells that circulate in the blood of animals bearing prostate tumors.
• Novel methods to isolate and characterize circulating tumor cells will be employed in patients to determine if metastasis-initiating prostate cancer cells circulate in man.

What this means for patients: Understanding the biology of metastasis-initiating cells could inform new targets for slowing/inhibiting the lethal metastatic process. In addition, measurement of metastasis-initiating cells in the setting of active surveillance for primary prostate cancer could better stratify patients who may benefit from early and aggressive clinical intervention.