The research of Donald J. Tindall, Ph.D., and his team focuses on prostate cancer and the mechanisms by which prostate cancer cells survive after androgen ablation, the most common therapy for advanced prostate cancer.

Prostate cancer is initially an androgen-dependent tumor. However, after androgen ablation therapy, most prostate tumors will progress to an androgen-independent stage, at which point there is no effective therapy. Dr. Tindall was the first to demonstrate that androgen-independent prostate cancer cells still require the androgen receptor protein for tumor progression. This has led to a paradigm shift in the field of prostate cancer research and has pointed to the androgen receptor as a target for prognosis and novel therapeutics.

More recently, Dr. Tindall and his team discovered novel variants of the androgen receptor that lack the steroid-binding domain, but retain constitutive transcriptional activation. They are currently studying the genes that these variants regulate in order to identify potential therapeutic targets against prostate cancer.

Dr. Tindall's research is supported by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the T.J. Martell Foundation.