The Quigley Lab studies how prostate tumors develop resistance to targeted therapy. We study patient tumors directly to discover how genomic and epigenomic alterations acquired by the tumor affect patient outcomes. This knowledge can help us to develop novel therapies and identify predictive and prognostic biomarkers.

Our lab is part of the Department of Urology and the Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center at the University of California, San Francisco.

For an overview of research in our group, visit the About the Lab page.

Recent work from our team

News

November 2024

  • Congratulations to lab alums Martin Sjöström, MD and Arian Lundberg, PhD for starting their own laboratories as independent investigators!

October 2024

  • Congratulations to  Xiaolin Zhu MD, PhD on the publication of his project Genomic and transcriptomic features of androgen receptor signaling inhibitor resistance in metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer in the Journal of Clinical Investigation. In this work Xiaolin contrasted paired metastatic biopsies obtained before initiation of first-line androgen pathway inhibition therapy for mCRPC and after radiographic disease progression. This work identifies recurrent somatic alterations associated with progression and characterized the role of the gene SSTR1 in progression on androgen pathway inhibitors.
  • Congratulations to lab alum Arian Lundberg, PhD for being named a Prostate Cancer Foundation Young Investigator!

September 2024

  • We welcome UCSF Biomedical Informatics graduate student William Johnson to his Fall rotation in the Quigley lab! Also, a belated welcome to Staff Scientist Yuxin Yang, who joined us in August.

August 2024

  • David Quigley received the Rob Sutherland Award at the 8th International 2024 PacRim Breast and Prostate Cancer Meeting in Darwin, Australia.

July 2024

June 2024

  • Congratulations to postdoc Meng Zhang on the publication of Integrative analysis of ultra-deep RNA-seq reveals alternative promoter usage as a mechanism of activating oncogenic programmes during prostate cancer progression in Nature Cell Biology. This work showed Alternative Promoters (APs) become increasingly important as prostate cells evolve into metastatic tumors. Many groups (including us!) tend to focus on canonical gene promoters in genome-wide studies of mCRPC. Meng used very deep RNA-sequencing to interrogate all annotated promoters in benign, localized, and mCRPC biopsies. Meng found AP use changes as tumors develop therapy resistance and she linked these changes to binding activity of key disease drivers. Meng then linked changes in AP activity to epigenomic alterations at specific AP sites.

May 2024

  • David Quigley received the UCSF 2024 Outstanding Faculty Mentorship Award, chosen by the Associated Students of the Graduate Division. Dr. Quigley was honored to accept this award while standing on the same stage as Professor Allan Balmain (pictured below), his first UCSF mentor and supervisor for many years.

January 2024

  • The Quigley lab has been awarded a $1,000,000 three year Data Science Award from the Department of Defense's Prostate Cancer Research Program. Metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer (mCRPC) is unfortunately a lethal disease because most patients develop resistance to available therapies. Some mCRPC tumors resist therapy by becoming more efficient at processing androgen and remain androgen-dependent. However, a substantial number of mCRPC tumors change their behavior to reduce or eliminate their reliance on androgen signaling. This award will fund computational analysis into the transcriptional drivers of treatment-resistant mCRPC subtypes.
  • Congratulations to Dr. Xiaolin Zhu on receiving a Physician Research Award from the Department of Defense's Prostate Cancer Research Program. Dr. Zhu will be co-mentored by Felix Feng and David Quigley on this four year, $750,000 award.
  • We welcome UCSF Biomedical Informatics rotation student Siddharth Mahesh for a Winter rotation in the lab.

December 2023

August 2023

AARDVARK logo

June 2023

  • Congratulations to postdoc Arian Lundberg on the publication of The genomic and epigenomic landscape of double-negative metastatic prostate cancer in Cancer Research. In this work from our lab, presented at AACR Prostate Cancer 2023, we used unbiased analysis of 134 metastatic tumor biopsies from the West Coast Dream Team collaboration to dig into the transcription factors that drive different subtypes of therapy-resistance disease.

March 2023

Thaidy, Meng, and Arian present their work at AACR 2023
Thaidy Moreno-Rodriguez, Meng Zhang, and Arian Lundberg present their work at AACR Prostate 2023 in Denver

February 2023

  • David Quigley and postdoc Meng Zhang will be presenting talks the upcoming AACR Prostate Cancer meeting in March.

January 2023

  • Congratulations to postdocs Arian Lundberg and Thaidy Moreno-Rodriguez on receiving UCSF Cancer Center Travel Awards to present their research at the upcoming AACR Prostate Cancer meeting in March!

October 2022

September 2022

May 2022

  • Meng Zhang received a travel award to attend the Society for Basic Urological Research annual meeting in November.