The work of a team of researchers from MSK and Weill Cornell was recently featured by Australia’s The National Tribune, and could lead to more targeted therapies for certain types of prostate cancer.

The study, published in May in Science, used sequencing analyses of castration-resistant prostate cancer (CRPC) to define four subtypes of disease, including two newly identified by the team. One of these subtypes, stem cell-like (SCL) tumors, makes up around a quarter of CRPC cases. The team determined factors involved in the growth of SCL tumors, and treatments are already being tested that may improve outcomes for these patients.