Category: Research

Dr. Trinh received a $1.5M Department of Defense-Congressionally Directed Medical Research Programs (Health Disparity Research Award) Award for the project titled: “Increasing access to definitive treatment for prostate cancer by removing transportation barriers for underserved patients: A multilevel feasibility study.”

The proposed project uses a multi-pronged approach to better characterize and address the effects of greater travel burden on care access disparities. Geospatial methods will be used to generate higher resolution and more precise analyses of travel burden and to test a pilot rideshare intervention among Black men. In addition, qualitative research methods will be employed to identify facilitators and barriers of the rideshare intervention that can inform the implementation, sustainability and scaling up of successful intervention components.

Quoc-Dien Trinh, MD, MBA
Section Chief of Urology, Brigham and Women’s Faulkner Hospital
Co-Director, Dana-Farber/Brigham and Women’s Prostate Cancer Center
Associate Professor of Surgery, Harvard Medical School

Dr. Trinh is the section chief of urology at Brigham and Women’s Faulkner Hospital, an associate professor of surgery at Harvard Medical School and co-director of the Dana-Farber/Brigham and Women’s Prostate Cancer Center. Dr. Trinh is the 2021 recipient of the Brigham and Women’s Hospital Outstanding Citizenship Award and the 2022 American Urological Association Young Urologist of the Year. He is a core faculty and member of the Internal Advisory Board at the Center for Surgery and Public Health, a joint program of the Brigham, Harvard Medical School and the Harvard School of Public Health.

Dr. Trinh’s research focuses primarily on inequity and outcomes of cancer care delivery. He co-founded the Mass General Brigham Prostate Cancer Outreach Clinic, a United Against Racism initiative. He received his medical degree from the Université de Montréal in Canada, where he also completed his residency training in urology. He completed his fellowship in minimally invasive urologic oncology at the Vattikuti Urology Institute.

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.

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.