The Prostate Cancer Foundation has announced grants totaling $6 million to six teams of investigators conducting innovative research on treatments and cures for prostate cancer.

Funded in part by a $5.4 million grant from the Movember Foundation, the 2017 Movember Foundation-PCF Challenge Awards will support cross-disciplinary teams of at least three investigators, one of whom must be a young investigator.

Investigators receiving $1 million 2017 Movember Foundation-PCF Challenge Awards include Felix Feng, Alan Ashworth, and Charles Ryan (University of California, San Francisco) and Alexander Wyatt (University of British Columbia) ("Identifying and Overcoming PARP Inhibitor Resistance in Patients with Metastatic Prostate Cancer");  Joshua Lang (University of Wisconsin), Howard Scher (Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center), Scott Dehm (Masonic Cancer Center, University of Minnesota), and Scott Tagawa (Weill Cornell Medicine and New York-Presbyterian) ("Therapeutic Targeting of AR Variant Prostate Cancer with a Novel Antibody Drug Conjugate"); Chad Mirkin (Northwestern University) ("Spherical Nucleic Acids as Therapeutic Vaccines for the Treatment of Prostate Cancer"); Ana Aparicio, Nicholas Navin, and Theocharis Panaretakis (University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center) and Peter Kuhn (University of Southern California) ("Impact of Local Therapy on Outcomes of Men with De Novo Metastatic Prostate Cancer within Molecularly Defined Subsets"); and Nupam Mahajan (H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center) and Felix Feng (University of California, San Francisco) ("Targeting Androgen Receptor and ACK1 Signaling with Novel Epigenetic Therapeutics in Castration-Resistant Prostate Cancer").

The foundation also announced that the University of Wisconsin's Douglas McNeel will receive the $1 million 2017 Movember Foundation-Distinguished Gentleman's Ride Challenge Award for his research project, "Broadening T-Cell Activation with PD-1 Blockade to Treat Advanced, Metastatic Prostate Cancer."

"The generous donation from the Movember Foundation enables teams of research scientists to accelerate the delivery of life-extending and life-saving therapies for men living with prostate cancer," said PCF president and CEO Jonathan W. Simons. "As we embark upon the tenth year of our remarkable relationship with the Movember Foundation, we are grateful to continue our partnership as we continue to help further advance therapies and defeat prostate cancer once and for all."