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Hisae Nakamura
I enjoy camping, hiking and any other outdoor activities.
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 View Publications
| Department: |
Cancer Endocrinology
(@ the BCCRC since 2005) |
| Research Role: |
Graduate Student |
| Degree Sought: |
PhD,  Interdisciplinary Oncology, UBC |
| Thesis Topic: |
Potential tumor promoting effects of genistein in prostate cancer |
| Advisor: |
Yuzhuo Wang
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| Education: |
MSc. (Oral cancer and early detection), SFU, 2003
BSc. (Biology), SFU, 1998
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| Birthplace: |
Sapporo, Japan  |
| Phone: |
7010 |
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Research Interests:
Cancer is the second leading cause of death in North America, claiming 1 in 5 people's lives in recent years. Despite numerous efforts made to improve survival rate of this disease, lack of effective anti-cancer therapies persistently challenges clinicians today. With the growing health awareness and popularity in alternative medicine, an increasing number of cancer patients and healthy people are seeking medical solution in supplements often extracted from natural plant sources. Among the many phytochemicals reported of having health benefits, soy has been the focus of investigation for its anti-cancer effects. A major soy compound, genistein, has previously been shown to inhibit growth of cancer using cultured cells. In order to assess its therapeutic potential for prostate cancer metastasis, we used our newly developed prostate cancer xenograft model in which a patient prostate cancer tumor line was developed and grafted in the kidney of SCID mice. Paradoxical to all previous reports, we found that genistein promoted growth and metastasis of the human prostate cancer xenograft. It is, therefore, very important to further investigate these alarming findings as it poses a great threat to the public and cancer patients who take genistein supplements. Furthermore, there are a few clinical studies currently underway to test its efficacy in cancer patients. If this soy compound shows a cancer promoting effect in human cancer, there is urgency in validating our previous results. We hope that the data generated from this study will inform the public about the adverse effects of genistein, help minimize its detrimental impact on cancer patients and identify a new target which opens up a whole new therapeutic avenue in cancer research.
The novel cancer tissue xenograft models, developed at the Living Tumor Laboratory of the BC Cancer Agency from patients' cancer specimens, are considered clinically more relevant than conventional cancer cell xenografts. As such, they are invaluable to our research.
URL: http://www.bccrc.ca/ce/people_hnakamura.html
The BC Cancer Agency Research Centre is the research arm of the BC Cancer Agency (BCCA),
and is supported by the BC Cancer Foundation.
This page was last modified at 12:30pm on June 25, 2009
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