Harvard Catalyst Profiles

After graduation with a PhD in Genetics at Fudan University, Dr. Fang Xie joined Mayo Clinic and his research was focused on endocrine therapy resistance in hormone-naive breast cancer. During his time at Mayo, he also generated a series of patient-derived xenografts (PDXs) using bone biopsies from patients with metastatic castration resistant prostate cancer (CRPC). To extend his research on drug resistance in CRPC and pursue a scientific career as a translational scientist, Dr. Xie joined the Balk Lab at BIDMC/HMS in 2017. Dr. Xie is currently collaborating with a physician-scientist, Dr. Rupal Bhatt, on studies aimed at deciphering the molecular mechanisms underlying resistance in CRPC patients following the failure of taxane-based therapies. One of his recent findings is the increased sensitivity of docetaxel-resistant CRPC PDX tumors to BH3 mimetics such as Navitoclax and S63845. The active hypothesis for this study is that taxanes kill interphase prostate cancer cells in vivo through induction of apoptosis and that blocking the function of pro-survival proteins may help overcome taxane resistance. In addition to these studies focused on taxane resistance, Dr. Xie is also undertaking several large screening projects, including high through-put drug screening on prostate cancer organoids to identify drugs which enhance the in vivo efficacy of docetaxel in CRPC patients and a whole genome CRISPR screen of enzalutamide-resistant prostate cancer cell lines to identify novel therapeutic targets and vulnerabilities in the castration-resistant setting.