Gyorgy Petrovics, PhD
My interest has been translational research focusing on biomarker development and precision medicine in prostate cancer, the cancer type significantly affecting the disproportionally male military population.
I was fortunate enough to discover the importance of a gene called ERG in prostate cancer, which is now recognized as a major driver oncogene. Two of my ERG patents were licensed by the company Exosome Diagnostics and is now widely used in clinical practice (EPI test) under major insurance coverage (BlueCross and Medicare) for the early urine-based detection of aggressive prostate cancer. We recently discovered a set of DNA damage repair gene germline mutations specifically in African American patients, which we propose to develop into a clinical test to stratify patients for targeted therapy options, addressing some of the ancestry-based disparity in prostate cancer.
I am also very interested to generate an “OMICS Compendium”, a molecular database from the CPDR Biobank specimens, which will also include images from our unique whole mounted prostate collection from the same patients, as well as their long term clinical/pathological follow up data. This may become a cornerstone resource for future research at CPDR.
| Kohaar I, Zhang X, Tan SH, Nousome D, Babcock K, Ravindranath L, Sukumar G, Mcgrath-Martinez E, Rosenberger J, Alba C, Ali A, Young D, Chen Y, Cullen J, Rosner IL, Sesterhenn IA, Dobi A, Chesnut G, Turner C, Dalgard C, Wilkerson MD, Pollard HB, Srivastava S, Petrovics G. Germline mutation landscape of DNA damage repair genes in African Americans with prostate cancer highlights potentially targetable RAD genes. Nat Commun. 2022; 13(1):1361. |
| Petrovics G, Li H, Stümpel T, Tan SH, Young D, Katta S, Li Q, Ying K, Klocke B, Ravindranath L, Kohaar I, Chen Y, Ribli D, Grote K, Zou H, Cheng J, Dalgard CL, Zhang S, Csabai I, Kagan J, Takeda D, Loda M, Srivastava S, Scherf M, Seifert M, Gaiser T, McLeod DG, Szallasi Z, Ebner R, Werner T, Sesterhenn IA, Freedman M, Dobi A, Srivastava S. A novel genomic alteration of LSAMP associates with aggressive prostate cancer in African American men. EBioMedicine, 2015; 2:1957-64. |
| Petrovics G, Liu A, Shaheduzzaman S, Furasato B, Sun C, Chen Y, Nau M, Ravindranath L, Chen Y, Dobi A, Srikantan V, Sesterhenn IA, McLeod DG, Vahey M, Moul JW, Srivastava S. Frequent Overexpression of ETS Related Gene-1 (ERG1) in Prostate Cancer Transcriptome. Oncogene 2005; 24(23):3847-52. This article was highlighted in: Fused genes may help explain origins of prostate cancer, Science 310, p603, 2005; Gene fusion found in prostate cancer, JAMA 294, p2832, 2005; Breaking the rules of cancer, Nat. Med. 12, p14-15, 2006. |
Area of Research
Institution Affiliations
Research Professor, USUHS/Walter Reed Department of Surgery
Senior Scientist in support of Center for Prostate Disease Research (CPDR), Murtha Cancer Center Research Program (MCCRP)