Category: Awards

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Alexander Cole, MD, Awarded $1.3M Department of Defense Award

Dr. Cole was awarded the Prostate Cancer Research Program (PCRP) Physician Research Award for “The BRIDGE Project: Broadening the Reach of Imaging, Diagnostics, and Genetic Evaluation.”

This project aims to assess race-based differences in receipt of advanced testing (incorporating both advanced imaging and molecular testing) and targeted interventions (incorporating image-guided therapeutics and molecular-targeted therapies) among Black men at risk for prostate cancer.

Alexander Cole, MD
Associate Surgeon, Division of Urology, Department of Surgery
Co-Leader, Aquilon Lab, Brigham and Women’s Hospital
Assistant Professor of Surgery, Harvard Medical School

Dr. Cole is an assistant professor of surgery at Harvard Medical School, associate surgeon in the Brigham and Women’s Hospital Division of Urology and junior core faculty at the Center for Surgery and Public Health.

He holds a Bachelor of Arts in philosophy from Harvard College and a medical degree from Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. He underwent training in general surgery and completed his urology residency at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and pursued a research fellowship at the Brigham and Women’s Center for Surgery and Public Health. Dr. Cole further specialized in urologic oncology and image-guided therapeutics through a clinical fellowship, which included surgical oncology training at the Brigham/Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and a fellowship with a focal therapy team at the University College London.

Dr. Cole’s research focuses on health systems and health care delivery models, particularly for underserved minority populations. He has published over 120 journal articles and two book chapters and presented numerous abstracts at national and international meetings. His contributions have been recognized with several awards, including two Max Willscher Research Awards from the New England Section of the American Urological Association. In 2019, Dr. Cole was the New England urologist chosen to represent the region at the Early Career Investigators Showcase at AUA 2020. Most recently, in 2022, he was awarded the Bruce A. Beal and Robert L. Beal Surgical Fellowship from the Department of Surgery.

In his capacity as faculty in the Division of Urology and the Center for Surgery and Public health, he serves as co-leader of the Aquilon Lab, a research team founded by Dr. Quoc-Dien Trinh. The lab holds a mixture of internal and external funding, including the Department of Defense and American Cancer Society, and consists of a core group of 3-4 research fellows from the Center for Surgery and Public Health and the Division of Urology.

Dr. Cole’s clinical focus is the treatment of genitourinary malignancies, with a focus on diagnostics and image-guided therapeutics for prostate cancer.

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2023 Final Service Conference and Graduation Awards

The following recipients were recently honored with awards at the Final Service Conference.

Surgery Class of ’63 Scholar – Frances Hu, MD, MSc

Murray – Simonian Award – Megan Sulciner, MD, and Charles Serhan, PhD

Surgical Oncology Research Award – Megan Sulciner, MD

PBB Scholar Award (This award is the highest ABSITE score and comes with a $500 award) – Alexander Ordoobadi, MD

Medical Student Teaching Awards

PGY1     John Gaspich, MD

PGY2     Orly Farber, MD, and Joshua Roshal, MD

PGY3     Alex Ordoobadi, MD

PGY4     Liz Yates, MD

PGY5     Joshua Jolissaint, MD, MSc (The Robert T. Osteen Award for Medical Student Education in Surgery)

Edward Kwasnik Award – Sourav Bose, MD, MSc

Christine Weeks Schofield Award – Jordan Forte, MD

Grant Rodkey Award – Sourav Bose, MD, MSc

Vollman Award (This award is voted by the faculty at Faulkner Hospital) – Alex Ordoobadi, MD

Star Thrower Award (This award is given by the administrative chiefs to the resident who has gone above and beyond) – Christine Wu, MD

Francis D. Moore Award (This award is voted on by junior residents and presented to a senior resident) – Adam Fields, MD

Donald J. Matson Award (This award is voted on by all the house staff and presented to a faculty member) – Nakul Raykar, MD, MPH

Richard E. Wilson Award (This award is voted on by chief residents and presented to a faculty member) – Naomi Shimizu, MD

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Li Jia, PhD, Awarded a $2M National Institutes of Health Grant

Dr. Jia has been awarded by the National Institutes of Health and the National Cancer Institute for his study, “MMS22L loss and PARP inhibition in prostate cancer.”

One of the major barriers to effective treatment using PARP inhibitor is how to select patients who most likely benefit from PARP inhibition. In this project, we will determine whether loss of MMS22L can predict response to PARP inhibitor in prostate cancer.

Li Jia, PhD
Director of Urology Research, Division of Urology, Brigham and Women’s Hospital
Assistant Professor of Surgery, Harvard Medical School

Dr. Jia’s expertise lies in linking basic molecular biology with translational medicine. During the past 16 years, the major focus of his research has been on determining the molecular mechanisms of prostate cancer development and progression. Much effort has been devoted to understanding epigenetic mechanisms of androgen receptor-mediated transcription in prostate cancer. Using high-throughput next-generation sequencing, his lab has investigated dynamic chromatin modifications mediated by androgen receptor binding at a genome-wide level. These genomic analyses have led to the discovery of functional non-coding genetic variants that influence cancer-specific gene transcription. Specifically, his research has determined that prostate cancer risk loci within the chromosomal region 8q24 act as tissue-specific enhancers for the proto-oncogene c-MYC.

Since joining Brigham and Women’s Hospital/Harvard Medical School in 2014, Dr. Jia and his lab continue to focus on androgen receptor signaling and its related pathways (including WNT signaling and DNA repair pathway) that drive prostate cancer growth, metastasis and drug resistance. The goal of his research is to understand how these genes and pathways function under androgen-deprived conditions and identify therapeutic vulnerabilities in castration-resistant prostate cancer when androgen receptor-directed therapies fail.

Dr. Jia holds a Bachelor of Medicine and a PhD in nephrology from Nanjing Medical University in China. He completed postdoctoral training in urology at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles.