Natasha Kyprianou, PhD

Dr. Natasha Kyprianou is a Professor in the Departments of Urology and Oncological Sciences at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and a member of the NCI-designated Tisch Cancer Institute. Dr. Kyprianou is a translational researcher in urologic oncology with expertise in the pathobiology of prostate, bladder and kidney cancer and specific focus on dissecting mechanisms of therapeutic resistance in advanced lethal disease.   Pioneering studies by Dr. Kyprianou’s team first established the novel effect of microtubule-targeting chemotherapy on the localization of the androgen receptor (AR) and activity in prostate cancer enabling a novel insight into therapeutic cross-resistance. This paradigm shift evidence fueled a new direction of investigations in therapeutic targeting of AR by taxane chemotherapys. More recent studies using pre-clinical models and prostate cancer xenografts exploited the therapeutic targeting of epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) in metastatic castration resistant prostate cancer (CRPC) by taxane chemotherapy, in combination with antiandrogens. In pursuing apoptosis-inducing therapeutics against advanced urologic tumors, Dr. Kyprianou and her group found that drugs used to treat benign prostatic hyperplasia, α1-adrenoceptor antagonists such as doxazosin and terazosin (harboring the quinazoline-structural nucleus) have novel apoptosis-inducting activity in benign and malignant prostate tissue. Structural optimization led to the discovery of a novel class of quinazoline-based compounds with potent anoikis-inducing effects against prostate and renal tumors. Further functional characterization of lead quinazoline compounds identified the molecular profiling of anoikis-inducing effect against tumor growth, vascularity and metastasis via targeting ECM interactions and focal adhesions in in vitro and in vivo, models of CRPC and renal cancer.