Luke Gilbert, PhD, assistant professor in the Department of 
Urology and Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center, has been named to the newly created Goldberg-Benioff Endowed Professorship in Prostate Cancer Translational Biology. Funds from the professorship will support Gilbert’s teaching, research and service activities in this expanding field. Gilbert joined the UCSF faculty in 2017, after earning a doctoral degree at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and postdoctoral training at UCSF, where he acquired extensive training in cancer biology, synthetic biology and functional genomics.
Gilbert and his laboratory team at UCSF use innovative genome- and epigenome- editing technologies, including CRISPR, to systematically model how and why some cancer cells respond to drug therapies while others do not. They examine genes known to cause cancer (oncogenes) as well as epigenetic factors that cause other genes to become disregulated and fuel cancer growth. Gilbert’s team is also developing new models of human prostate cancer to test next-generation drugs and strategies that target advanced metastatic prostate cancer.
“Exploring prostate cancer at the cellular level is an important part of our research mission,” said UCSF Urology Chair Peter R. Carroll, MD, MPH. “We are grateful for the generosity of donors that allow us to invest in a rising talent like Luke Gilbert.”