  

With numbers so staggering it is easy to assume that prostate cancer isn’t getting publicity because of the taboo nature of the screening process, but Dr. Cox offers another explanation. “Prostate cancer has a very low mortality rate.  1 in 6 men get prostate cancer at some point in their life, but very few of those are actually going to die from it.  Because of its low mortality rate people assume that it’s not a bad cancer and if they get it is treatable and they will survive and be fine, but the reality is because so many men are getting it, it still has a high death rate.”

Despite its low mortality rate, the American Cancer Society recommends yearly screening after the age of 50 for most men or 40 if you are at an increased risk level.  In the case of prostate cancer, as in the case of most cancers, regular screening and early detection is your best bet, but Dr. Cox’s work is focusing on the late stage of cancer in order to provide a treatment where there was none before.  

As Dr. Cox explains “Prostate cancer has very few treatments.  In the early stage cancer it is very treatable.  We have drugs that largely cut the supply of androgen or testosterone off, but once these cancers progress to late stage, much like breast cancer, we have no treatment options besides harmful chemotherapy and radiation therapies.  The majority of efforts these days are trying to develop drugs that target late stage cancers, where we have no drug options available.  My lab is developing new small molecules that look very promising for treating both early and late stage cancer.  We’ve got a series of compounds that we’ve just patented and are showing great promise, in fact, they’ve generated a lot of excitement at meetings around the world.”  In addition to prostate cancer, Dr. Cox’s research has serious implications on the treatment of breast cancer, diabetes and obesity. 

The research that Dr. Cox’s lab is conducting is so promising that the collaboration between scientists at the University of Houston and The Methodist Hospital Research Institute and UTEP has received a 5.2 Million dollar grant from the Cancer prevention and Research Institute of Texas.  

With current economic conditions, federal funding of projects like Dr. Cox’s is on the decline.  For every research opportunity that is funded, several others go without, and the development of earth changing technology is delayed.  “Most new technologies are the results of hundreds of different research laboratories around the world taking small steps and publishing their results, so these things are very slow to develop.  This country needs to put a lot more effort and funding into research.  When I was a graduate student 20 years ago, you could score in the 40th percentile of an NIH grant and get funded, but now you have to score in the top 8 percent to get funding. 