Dr. Leland W. K. Chung is currently a Professor in the Department of Medicine and Surgery and the Director of the Uro-Oncology Research Program at Cedars Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. Dr. Chung’s laboratory has a long-standing interest in prostate cancer biology and therapy with research focused on the concept of paracrine factors mediating epithelial-mesenchymal interaction and androgen receptor (AR) signaling which regulates normal prostate growth and development as well as promoting neoplastic prostate progression, including distant metastasis to bone and soft tissues. His team characterized a variety of microenvironments that ultimately control the growth, differentiation and carcinogenesis of the prostate gland. Dr. Chung’s team developed human LNCaP and ARCaP progression models to study prostate cancer biology, its transition to mesenchyme and gained growth, migratory and metastatic potential. His research team recently has defined a convergent RANK-c-Met signaling pathway in prostate cancer growth and metastasis, which they have been using to differentiate and recruit metastatsis-initiating cells to study tumor dormancy.