Dr. Flora A. M. Ukoli
Associate Professor
Department of Surgery at Meharry

Mission and History of the DOD Prostate Cancer Research Program

This $800,000, 3 year grant is a HBCU Collaborative Partnership Award from the Department of Defense (DOD) under its Prostate Cancer Research Program.  Funded in 2005, the project, entitled “Development of the Meharry Medical College Prostate Cancer Research Program” is headed by Dr. Flora Ukoli, an Associate Professor in the Department of Surgery at Meharry.  It includes the efforts of a number of researchers from Meharry and from Meharry’s Alliance partner, Vanderbilt University. The
co-PI at Meharry is Derrick J. Beech, M.D., Chair of Surgery. Robert J. Matusik, Ph.D. is the collaborating PI from Vanderbilt University Medical Center and serves as one of the basic science mentors for this program.

The goals of the partnership and the HBCU Collaborative Partnership Aware are to: a) focus on the ethnic disparity in biology, epidemiology and clinical presentation of prostate cancer in the community; b) create long term, stable relationships between prostate cancer researchers at collaborating institutions; and c) establish an evolving cohort of nationally funded, Meharry PI-directed, prostate cancer grants.

Interestingly this proposal has an international component, involving a research team in Nigeria at the University of Benin Teaching Hospital. The PI worked at this facility for more than 20 years and became the chair of the department of community medicine at Benin before relocating to the United States.

Finally, this project was strengthened by a 2002 DOD IDEA Award from DAMD, entitled the “Role of Dietary Fat & Vitamin E in Prostate Cancer Risk Among African-Americans and Africans: A Case Control Study”.