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Dr. Yi-Fen Lee was recently awarded a 2-year grant from the Hope Foundation, for her proposal submitted to the SWOG Impact Award program, entitled Extracellular Vesicle Biomarkers for Predicting Response to BCG Therapy. Dr. Lee will collaborate on this project with Dr. Messing, as well as with Drs. Edith Lord and Scott Gerber of the Department of Microbiology and Immunology, and with Dr. Robert Svatek of the University of Texas Health Sciences Center. They will study the critical problem of the inability to predict which patients with high grade non-muscle invading bladder cancer are likely to respond favorably to BCG.

An abstract produced by second-year Pathology graduate student, Chia-Hao Wu, won "Best Poster" at the American Urological Association (AUA) 2017 annual meeting, held May 14 at the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center.

AUA is a prestigious meeting that only accepts 30 percent of abstracts submitted. Abstracts by Wu and Carlos Ortiz-Bonilla, both of the URMC Pathology PhD Program, were both accepted. Wu's abstract entitled, "Cancer Extracellular Vesicles Promote Bladder Tumorigenesis by Inducing Chronic Endoplasmic Reticulum Stress and Inflammation: A Novel Mechanism for Field Cancerization," was named best poster in a moderated poster session for the Bladder Cancer Basic Research and Pathophysiology section.