Prestigious award for Irish Cancer Society Research Fellow

Irish Cancer Society Research Fellow, Dr Maria Prencipe, was last night awarded the prestigious 11th St Luke’s Young Investigators Award at a special awards ceremony held at the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland in Dublin.

Dr Maria Prencipe scooped the top prize for her research at University College Dublin that investigates building a pipeline for novel therapies in castrate-resistant prostate cancer (CRPC), and she will receive an education grant and the Royal Academy of Medicine in Ireland Bronze Medal.

This year, all four finalists are Irish Cancer Society Research Fellows, who are receiving combined research grants worth over €850,000 from the Society to advance research in their respective cancer fields.

Dr Anne Marie Byrne, Dr Britta Stordal, Dr Maria Prencipe and Dr Antoinette Perry were the four finalists selected to deliver ten minute presentations of their research before the selection panel decided on the overall winner. The presentations, which took place prior to the St Luke’s Lecture, focused on their projects which span a range of cancer areas including oesophageal, ovarian, and prostate cancer, and investigate a number of importance topics such as building a pipeline for novel therapies in prostate cancer. The two Irish Cancer Society Research Fellows working in the area of prostate cancer are supported by the Movember foundation.

Irish Cancer Society Research Fellow, Dr Maria Prencipe, commenting on the win said, “I am delighted to win the 11th St Luke’s Young Investigators Award for my research that looks at the treatment of castrate-resistant prostate cancer (CRPC), which, despite the emergence of new treatments, is still challenging to treat.

“Defining the mechanism of resistance represents a key question facing clinicians and scientists, and we have been using a combination of transcriptomics (or genome-wide expression profiling) and bioinformatics analysis with much success. We have recently identified Serum Response Factor (SRF) as an important transcription factor in an in vitro model of CRPC. We investigated the relationships between SRF and androgen receptor (AR) in advanced prostate cancer, and a negative feedback loop was demonstrated, signifying the importance of SRF and CRPC and support SRF as a promising therapeutic target alone or in combination with current treatments.”

The St Luke’s Young Investigators Award, established in 2004, recognises young researchers in the field of clinical, basic or translational oncology research who are in their early years of research. The award is supported by the Royal Academy of Medicine in Ireland and St Luke’s Radiation Oncology Network, Dublin.

Commenting on the win, Prof. John Fitzpatrick, Head of Research, Irish Cancer Society said, “We are incredibly proud of Dr Maria Prencipe and all the finalists who represent a cohort of future research leaders who will keep the field of cancer research vibrant with new ideas and a steadfast commitment to their field. That all four are Irish Cancer Society Research Fellows is a marvelous achievement for the Society. We congratulate Dr Maria Prencipe on her outstanding achievement winning the 11th St Luke’s Young Investigators Award, and encourage her to continue in her career to advance high-quality research in the area of prostate cancer in Ireland.”

The Irish Cancer Society has contributed more than €33 million to cancer research since 1963. During that period, more than 650 important research findings have been made. Click here for more about the Irish Cancer Society research programme.