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Clement Ip, PhD, Professor Emeritus in Oncology from the Department of Cancer Prevention and Control at Roswell Park Cancer Institute (RPCI), is the principal investigator of a $5.4M P01 grant from the National Institutes of Health to study the role of finasteride and selenium in preventing prostate cancer.

Finasteride is a drug used to treat male pattern baldness, and has since been approved to treat men with prostate cancer. Finasteride is more well-known by its brand names, including Propecia. The development and enlargement of the prostate gland are dependent on the potent androgen 5a-dihydrotestosterone (DHT). Finasteride metabolites in blood and urine and decreases DHT. Selenium is thought to work cooperatively with finasteride to modulate certain molecular events in controlling the clonal expansion of prostate cancer cells.

Diagnosed with advanced prostate cancer in August 2003, Jon Lyon has fought his cancer with every treatment option possible and he continues to look for new therapies to keep his disease under control.

Jon has actively researched treatment options for advanced prostate cancer and participated in several clinical studies. “They have brought me good, quality time. Some treatments have worked better than others but all have helped me to stay alive. I am confident that someday scientists will defeat this dreadful disease, and I want to be one of the first to receive that therapy.”

A significant number of breast and prostate cancers eventually become resistant to current treatment approaches. A prevailing paradigm in the field is that if specific molecules can be identified that fuel the cancer’s ability to resist current treatments, then a new arsenal of drugs directed to those molecules should halt cancer in its tracks.