(UroToday.com) Dr. Arul Chinnaiyan, Director, Michigan Center for Translational Pathology, S.P. Hicks Endowed Professor of Pathology was awarded the Science of Oncology Award for facilitating the delivery of precision medicine and advancing the field of cancer genomics and functional biology. In this lecture, Dr. Arul Chinnaiyan highlighted some of the accomplishments of his group over the past several years. He first described the discovery of the TMPRSS2-ERG fusion,1 which was fundamental work leading to a broader understanding of the incidence of gene fusions in solid tumors. This was discovered initially using microarray expression data from cancer samples looking for transcripts expressed at outlier levels. This approach identified outlier expression of ERG, and subsequent analysis uncovered fusion of a 3’ portion of this gene with the upstream enhancer and 5’ end of the androgen regulated TMPRSS2 gene. Mechanistically, the fusion facilitates androgen regulation of ERG protein expression in the prostate, is found a large proportion of prostate cancer, has been shown to promote prostate carcinogenesis in pre-clinical models, and has clear utility as a diagnostic biomarker for pathologists. Many gene fusions in solid tumors have been identified subsequently, including in prostate cancer, a summary of which is shown below. Ongoing work focused on ERG over-expression in prostate cancer includes the development of urine-based prostate cancer screening tests, and peptidomimetics for blocking ERG function.