Title:   
Assistant Professor, Project Director

Institute:
Lady Davis Institute for Medical Research, Jewish General Hospital, Montreal

Department:  
Segal Cancer Centre, Department of Oncology

Province:
Quebec

Training:  
Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Texas, Arlington, TX, USA; INRS-Institut Armand-Frappier, University of Québec at Montreal, Montreal, Quebec, Canada
PhD, Structure-based drug design, University of Essex, UK
MSc, Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China
BSc, Chemistry, Sichuan University, Chengdu, China

Research interests:
Structure-based identification of novel small molecules that circumvent drug resistance due to mutations in drug targets; Identification of small molecules that modulate protein-protein interactions; Development of methods in Computational Biology & Chemistry.

Career highlights:
By integrating structure-based drug design, medicinal chemistry and molecular biology, Dr. Wu and his team have discovered a series of bioactive compounds for various drug targets, including androgen receptor, an established drug target for prostate cancer. Dr. Wu and his collaborators have discovered novel small-molecule activators of Nrf2 that may be useful for neuroprotection and chemoprevention. Dr. Wu and his team have investigated a series of mutated drug targets, revealing novel strategies for designing better inhibitors that are effective against the wild-type and the mutated drug targets.
 

Research Projects

Project title:  
Development of bifunctional antiandrogens that suppress oncogenic activation of the androgen receptor in castration-resistant prostate cancer

Funding period:  
2010-2012

Program:
Operating Grant (Basic Research)

Summary:
Current mainstay treatment for advanced prostate cancer aims to suppress activation of the androgen receptor (AR). However, most patient progress to a lethal disease state called castration-resistant prostate cancer (CRPC) due to re-activation of the AR via mechanisms that cannot be inhibited by current modalities. Dr. Wu and his team have discovered several novel compounds that are able to inhibit such AR re-activation. The funding will allow them to optimize their 'hits' as novel therapeutics for the CRPC.