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Cook - Valencia - 2026

Mentor: Leah M. Cook, M.S., Ph.D. | Leah.cook@nih.gov
Lab
Center for Cancer Research (CCR), National Cancer Institute (NCI), Frederick Campus, Cancer Innovation Laboratory (CIL)
Mentor: Julio Cesar Valencia, M.D., M.P.H. | valencij@mail.nih.gov
Lab
Staff scientist in the Cook Lab Center for Cancer Research (CCR), National Cancer Institute (NCI), Frederick Campus, Cancer Innovation Laboratory (CIL)

Designing novel immunotherapies against castration resistant metastatic prostate cancer

The primary focus of the Cook laboratory is to develop innovative strategies to target bone metastatic prostate cancer. Current standard-of-care therapeutic strategies mainly use androgen deprivation therapies (ADT), which delay prostate cancer growth but eventually lead to resistance. By contrast, immunotherapy is only used late in prostate cancer progression when ADT fails limiting its overall impact on outcomes. Hence, our lab is focused on the development of novel immunotherapies using preclinical models that closely mimic clinical disease. Although 3D models and syngeneic tumor models do not exactly recapitulate human progression of prostate cancer, they do offer advantages over xenograft models. This approach can be employed as a robust pre-clinical immuno-oncology model in investigating novel treatment combinations with co-stimulatory molecules and/or standard-of-care (ADT) approaches.

For this project, the student will:

  1. Participate in preparation and design of 3D-models using different matrix sources to evaluate the interaction of prostate cancer cells with immune cells, primarily neutrophils.
  2. Assist in survival data collection and analysis of prostate cancer cells in 3D models
  3. Assist in decoding immune heterogeneity by flow cytometry in prostate cancer tumors receiving tailored immunotherapy.

Throughout this project, the selected student will receive mentorship within an active interdisciplinary laboratory setting with access to multiple equipment and technology based on interest, such as flow cytometry and confocal microscopy imaging. The student will also gain experience in design and execution of experiments for testing immune-oncology responses. Our laboratory is part of CCR, a premier cancer research program located on the NCI campus in Frederick, Maryland.