Dr Dong Lin

Dr. Lin is a molecular biologist and pathologist with expertise in the fields of cancer model development, in vivo functional and drug efficacy studies, and biomarker discovery. Dr. Lin received his medical degree from China Medical University and practiced as a surgical pathologist later on.  During his clinical practice, he realized the limitations of traditional pathology and ineffectiveness of broad-spectrum chemotherapies and recognized the urgent need for a better understanding of cancer biology in order to improve precision diagnosis and treatment of cancer. Since then, he has devoted his career to translational cancer research.

After joining the Vancouver Prostate Centre, he has been closely involved with establishing the Living Tumor Laboratory (LTL) series of patient-derived xenograft (PDX) models using samples from multiple cancer types. Particularly, he reported the largest collection of prostate cancer PDX in the world, including the first-in-field model of adenocarcinoma-to- neuroendocrine prostate cancer (NEPC) transdifferentiation and the first PDX collection derived from hormonal naïve prostate cancer tissues. These models provide unique and valuable tools for basic and translational cancer research and anti-cancer drug development. Using these models, he discovered a stromal gene expression signature, which can accurately predict the metastasis potential of primary prostate cancer patients (European Urology, 2017). He also led two research teams to identify novel therapeutic target, GRB10, for castration-resistant prostate cancer (European Urology, 2018), and to discover HP1α as an early driver regulating NEPC development and progression (Cancer Research, 2018). These findings have led to the preclinical development of novel small molecule inhibitors for target therapy of prostate cancer. He also played a key role in establishing pre-clinical drug screening platforms based on the PDX models and oversaw multiple pre-clinical in vivo functional studies and drug efficacy studies. To date, he has published more than 40 papers in high impact journals and co-edited a book entitled Patient-Derived Xenograft Models of Human Cancer with Dr. Yuzhuo Wang.

Dr. Lin is currently pursuing research in targeted therapeutics for advanced prostate cancers. He is working with Dr. Wang towards pioneering a research program integrating multi-omic data from PDX models and clinical samples. This will serve as the basis for revealing molecular mechanisms underlying prostate cancer progression and treatment resistance, especially for androgen receptor-independent prostate cancers. This interdisciplinary approach will provide valuable guidance for precision oncology and lead to the development of novel cancer therapies.