PittPharmacy Associate Professor Paul Johnston received a grant from the National Institutes of Health for his research "qHTS of Patient Derived HCC Models to Identify Novel Probes/Therapeutic Agents"
Hepatocellular Carcinoma (HCC) is the most common primary malignancy of the liver and while the incidence of this type of cancer is the 7th highest in the world HCC is the 2nd leading cause of cancer related death.
Most HCC patients are diagnosed with advanced disease and have a very poor prognosis. The complex epidemiology, etiology, pathogenesis and genetic heterogeneity of HCC makes drug discovery and development extremely challenging. Johnston has proposed a phenotypic HTS strategy in patient derived models of HBV, HCV and NASH associated HCC to identify novel probes and therapeutic leads.
