prostate cancer

Leaders in Research at UCSF Imaging

Our techniques at UCSF Imaging are helping tens of thousands of patients around the world with cancer by identifying more aggressive cancers determing whether a treatment is working. The goal is to improve our understanding of what causes diseases and then come up with new ways to treat cancers. We have developed biomarkers that enable us to confirm that we've delivered a drug to the tumor. There is very interesting biology coming out that is telling us what is driving these tumors and how they might be targeted in a very specific way.

Detecting Disease Using Advanced MRI

Daniel B. Vigneron, PhD, describes his work helping tens of thousands of patients with prostate cancer and brain tumors by identifying more accurately the location of the cancer, whether it is responding to treatment, and adjusting the treatment to more specifically target the disease, as needed.

Prostate Cancer: Options for Innovative Imaging Techniques

Dr. John Kurhanewicz focused research in the area of prostate cancer and using innovative new imaging techniques to help men at the time of diagnosis to decide on what the best treatment is for them as well as once they decided on a treatment helped them figure out whether the treatment was effective or not.

Prostate Artery Embolization: What Urologist Needs to Know

Dr. Ryan Kolhbrenner gives us an inside look into this groundbreaking new procedure, Prostate Artery Embolization (PAE) being offered at UCSF.

Learn more about Prostate Artery Embolization (PAE).

Prostate Artery Embolization: An Alternative to Prostate Surgery

Developing biomarkers to help treat tumors

Sabrina Ronen, PhD, is focused on developing new, non-invasive imaging biomarker indicators that characterize tumors. Ronen and her team are developing bio-markers that enable them to confirm delivery of a drug to the tumor. Once the oncologist has this information s/he can determine how to treat the patient in a much more precise and personalized way, targeting the treatment to the individual tumor. In this manner, the Ronen lab addresses breast cancer, prostate cancer and the higher-grade aggressive glioblastoma brain tumors as well as lower-grade, somewhat less aggressive brain tumors.

Dr. Kurhanewicz's Research: Defining Precision Medicine

Dr. Kurhanewicz’s research is about making the way we treat people more precise. His precision medicine focuses on providing better diagnosis of cancer and enhanced characterization of cancer. His aim is to develop imaging parameters that light up when there is cancer present, and light up to a much brighter degree when the cancer is aggressive. The goal is to look at the whole body and be able to tell the patient the extent of the disease. This is limited with the way we do it pathologically right now, which is with biopsies of regions.

Translating Research Into Patient Care with Dr. Kurhanewicz

Dr. Kurhanewicz came to UCSF, and stayed for so many years, because it allows him to do basic research, but also work very closely with clinical colleagues to get his work into the clinics, which he calls the translation process. He has seen two techniques go from the benchtop to patients. In one setting, they took the MRI exam for prostate cancer and improved it by adding additional parameters. They added metabolism to anatomic imaging and produced, with GE Healthcare, the first patient exam and took it into the first phase 1 clinical trial. Now, they are doing it again.