American Cancer Society Awards Five-Year Grant to Sylvester Urologic Surgeon

A urologic surgeon at Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center is among the first physician-scientists to receive a new grant from the American Cancer Society (ACS) intended to foster the development of investigators licensed to practice patient care and trained to conduct research.

Ranjith Ramasamy, M.D., assistant professor in the Department of Urology, was awarded a Clinician Scientist Development Grant in the amount of $729,000 for his research study, Nitric Oxide Based Immunotherapy for Castration Resistant Prostate Cancer (CPRC), which was published last year in the journal, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

CRPC presents a challenge to patients and their oncologists because the cancer continues to progress despite androgen depletion therapy.

“The incidence of CRPC is continuing to increase, and some patients don’t respond to available treatments,” said Dr. Ramasamy, senior author of the study. “It’s important to identify new mechanisms of the disease and new drugs that can help these patients.”

Dr. Ramasamy, along with research partner Himanshu Arora, Ph.D., have shown in animal models that the S-nitrosoglutathione (GSNO) compound, which increases nitric oxide (NO) levels, suppresses CRPC and has a major impact on tumor microenvironments, the complex, inflammatory shell around which tumors grow. Specifically, GSNO reduced levels of tumor-associated macrophages, immune cells that cancers co-opt into their microenvironment.

“We are focusing on evaluating the efficacy of nitric oxide-based compounds in combination with currently available therapeutics – FDA-approved as well as pre-clinical – against CRPC,” said Dr. Arora, a researcher in the Department of Urology and the study’s first author. “Collaboration between clinicians and scientists is essential to address the complex challenges in prostate cancer.”

The initial research on GSNO was funded through an internal pilot grant from Miami Clinical and Translational Science Institute and departmental support from Dipen Parekh, M.D. professor and chair in the Department of Urology, director of robotic surgery, and chief clinical officer of UHealth.

“Dr. Ramasamy’s discovery has the potential to be tested in future clinical trials either alone or in combination with other immunotherapy in men with castration-resistant prostate cancer who are non-responsive to both abiraterone and enzalutamide,” Dr. Parekh said.

Continued research, made possible through the ACS grant, could lead to new therapies for advanced prostate cancer patients left with few options.

Over the next five years, with support from this grant, Dr. Ramasamy and Dr. Arora anticipate uncovering the mechanistic as well as translational aspects of NO-based immunotherapy for treating CRPC.

“The impact of this award is huge,” Dr. Ramasamy said. “If not for this grant from the ACS, we could not have continued this line of research.”

Tags: American Cancer Society, Himanshu Arora, prostate cancer, Ranjith Ramasamy