Prostate Cancer Postdoctoral Training Program
Prostate cancer research at Cedars-Sinai encompasses everything from molecular genetics, biochemical analyses and comparative animal research, to clinical investigation, therapeutic trials and health services research.
Our Purpose
Prostate cancer is the second leading cause of cancer-related death in males in the U.S., with 299,010 new cases and 35,250 deaths estimated in 2024. There is great promise in prevention, early detection, distinction of indolent and aggressive disease, and novel treatments. Many unmet clinical needs require better understanding of:
- Prostate cancer genomics and signaling
- How the tumor interacts with its microenvironment
- The development of novel therapeutics strategies
- Understanding risk factors
- Variations in treatment patterns that lead to optimal care delivery
About Our Training
Each postdoctoral fellow (MD, PhD, or MD/PhD) is expected to develop transdisciplinary research efforts to understand an aspect of prostate cancer biology, disease intervention, or prevention. The program takes advantage of the cutting-edge technologies and the wide range of prostate cancer research efforts available at Cedars-Sinai. This broad-based training program enables trainees to write high impact publications and competitive grant proposals that will help them establish successful research careers in academia, academic medicine, governmental agencies, and in the private sector.
Trainees entering the program have a primary mentor and a secondary mentor. The requested primary mentor must be approved by the Executive Committee before being assigned. Trainees, with advice from their primary mentors, identify a mentoring committee of at least three faculty. The goal is to cut across traditional boundaries of prostate cancer research.
The training program provides:
- Experience in research training, including experimental design, advanced methodology, data interpretation, asking the next question, etc.
- Didactic courses in statistics, bioethics, and grantsmanship to complement the research training.
- Opportunities to present and publish research findings and with the critical input needed to improve and hone written and communication skills.
- Ability to attend meetings and network with peers and established scientists and clinicians.
- Experience to develop and understand how research efforts will directly impact patient care.
- Formal mentorship and exposure to NIH peer-review process through grants review simulation.
- Career guidance to facilitate development into leading academic researchers.
- Opportunities for clinical observation and leadership and writing coaching.
We collect interest throughout the year, even when positions may not be available. This form is not a formal application; however, we will be sure to e-mail you if and when new positions become available with instructions on how to formally apply.
Additional Program Information
Types of Research
We conduct prostate cancer research in 2 main areas:
- Mechanistic research – Trainees will learn various basic/translational biological tools based upon their individualized goals including options from genomics, bioinformatics and tumor host-microenvironment to better understand prostate cancer biology and how to translate these findings to the clinic.
- Clinical and health services research – Trainees will learn the latest tools within health services research to understand variations in care and outcomes, epidemiological principles and predictors of outcomes. They will apply these findings to develop optimized care pathways and identify opportunities for novel interventions to improve prostate cancer management through clinical trial design in lifestyle, decisional support tools or novel anti-neoplastic agents.
Program Structure
Working side-by-side in research activities with our faculty mentors, trainees are also expected to attend seminars, mentoring committee meetings, and didactic course work in Responsible Conduct in Research and Statistics in Medical Research. Trainees also participate in workshops on Grant Proposal Writing and Career Development. They attend weekly seminars by invited speakers, our internationally recognized faculty, and other post-doctoral trainees. At least once each year, trainees present their own research. By the end of 2 years of support, trainees are required to submit an extramural grant with enough data generated for at least one primary publication.
The genitourinary cancer tumor boards include medical, surgical, radiation oncologists, pathologists, and many other disciplines, as well as fellows. Patient cases, radiology images, and pathology results are reviewed and experts recommend the best course of treatment and a care plan is developed.
Prostate cancer clinical trials underway at Cedars-Sinai explore various facets of the disease, including possible new treatment options—from surgery to radiation—as well as new diagnostic, imaging and genetic-based advancements.
Faculty
The mentors of this unique and collaborative training program are committed to training young scientists in interdisciplinary translational research. The faculty, at the forefront of prostate cancer research and patient care, are united in recruiting and training talented minds that will perform interdisciplinary research at the Samuel Oschin Comprehensive Cancer Institute.
He is a practicing urologist with research focused on novel drug development for castrate-resistant prostate cancer patients. He is an in-training mentor.
Bhowmick is the Mark Goodson Chair in Oncology Research and he introduced the concept of paracrine-mediated tumor initiation, particularly resulting from alterations in TGF-ß signaling. He has mentored 28 research trainees; 23 now in faculty positions in the past decade. Thirteen of the trainees gained extramural postdoctoral funding.
He is a Urologist with a clinical focus on prostate cancer and Department of Defense supported research on age and co-morbidity of prostate cancer patients. His research also includes treatment decision-making for early stage prostate cancer. He is the Director of Health Services Research for the Cedars-Sinai Department of Surgery.
Her group has developed the tools to selectively purify large oncosomes from other types of extracellular vesicles, and obtained evidence that large oncosomes convey novel biological information within the tumor microenvironment. She has trained 11 postdocs in the last decade, and all are in research careers.
A urologist who studies risk stratification, health disparities, and the role of lifestyle and obesity on prostate cancer. He directs the Center for Integrated Research in Cancer and Lifestyle, is the associate director for Training and Education, and is the Warschaw, Robertson, Law Families Chair in Prostate Cancer. He has >800 papers, has trained multiple junior faculty members and over 70 trainees, and has 210 trainee-led first author publications.
Freeman is the Ben Maltz Chair in Cancer Therapeutics and his lab studies mechanisms of prostate cancer progression, including the use of bioinformatics resources to define prostate tumor status to guide therapeutic decisions. He has trained 11 independent faculty members in the past 10 years, and over 65 faculty members in his career.
He is a leader in the development of innovative surgical simulation and uses deep learning algorithms to better predict robotic surgical outcomes and automate surgeon skills assessment. He has published more than 200 papers in leading journals and trained 31 postdoctoral fellows, where 23 have continued in research.
He is chair of the Department of Urology at Cedars-Sinai and the Homer and Gloria Harvey Family Chair in Urologic Oncology in honor of Stuart Friedman, MD. His clinical practice focuses on treating prostate cancer and other urological cancers. His laboratory develops strategies for stimulating a cancer immune response and developing imaging tools for diagnostics. He has trained 10 fellows, with five currently in an academic faculty position.
He is an assistant professor in Radiation Oncology treating prostate cancer patients in the clinic, and is funded to study the reprogramming of the immune microenvironment by radiation to improve current therapies. He is an in-training mentor.
Posadas is a practicing GU oncologist with laboratory-based research focused on signal transduction inhibitor therapy for metastatic prostate cancer. As medical director of the Uro-Oncology Program, he facilitates investigators in the program to translate basic and clinical findings. He has trained 10 fellows, each of whom received extramural support.
He is a urologist with research expertise in prostate cancer epidemiology and translational research in patient care and medical education. He is an emerging leader in prostate-specific membrane antigen (PSMA)-based imaging and therapeutics, which recently has become practice-changing for prostate cancer patients. He is training one postdoctoral fellow and is an in-training mentor.
He is director of the Urologic Oncology Bioinformatics Group and a computational biologist with expertise in data integration and biological network modeling from multi-omics data. He is currently training one fellow.
Alumni and Trainees
- Jamelle Brown, PhD
- Andrew Chin, PhD
- Nadine Friedrich, MD
- Brad Gallent, MD, PhD
- Lillian Perez, PhD
- Sadaf Pustchi, PhD
- Denys Rujchanarong, PhD
- Manish Thiruvalluvan, PhD
- Joshua Watson, PhD
Cedars-Sinai is located in Los Angeles where our students can live and learn in one of the nation's most dynamic and energetic cities among a culturally and ethnically diverse population.
We are actively recruiting postdocs and researchers to be our colleagues and expand knowledge and expertise to make important breakthroughs.
Have Questions or Need Help?
Contact us if you have questions or would like to learn more about Cedars-Sinai Prostate Cancer NIH Funded Training Program.
Neil Bhowmick, PhD
Program Director
Professor of Cancer Biology
8750 Beverly Blvd., Atrium Building Rm 103
Los Angeles, CA 90048
Stephen Freedland, MD
Program Director
Professor and Co-Director of Prevention and Control
8500 Beverly Blvd., East Tower
Los Angeles, CA 90048