Arul Chinnaiyan

Arul M. Chinnaiyan is the S.P. Hicks Endowed Professor of Pathology, a Professor of Urology, and the Director of the Michigan Center for Translational Pathology at the University of Michigan Medical School. He is also a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator and an American Cancer Society Research Professor.

Arul Chinnaiyan received both PhD and MD degrees at the University of Michigan Medical School in 1999. He is a cancer researcher and the recipient of the 28th annual American Association for Cancer Research Award for Outstanding Achievement in Cancer Research at the annual meeting of the AACR in April 2008 in San Diego. He was also the leader of a group of scientists who received the inaugural 2007 American Association for Cancer Research "Team Science" Award for their discovery of gene fusions in prostate cancer.

Arul Chinnaiyan received a number of other awards and prizes, including the Burroughs Wellcome Fund Clinical Scientist Award in Translational Research and the Ramzi Cotran Young Investigator Award from the United States and Canadian Academy of Pathology. He is an elected member of the American Society for Clinical Investigation, the Association of American Physicians, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Medicine, and the National Academy of Sciences. He received the 2022 Sjöberg Prize and was jointly awarded the Harrington Prize for Innovation in Medicine alongside Charles L. Sawyers.

He is a member of the editorial boards for Oncogene and Cancer Discovery, and serves on the advisory board of Cancer Cell, among other journals.

Research and discovery Arul Chinnaiyan's research focuses on the molecular profiling of cancer to identify novel diagnostic markers and therapeutic targets. In 2005, his group discovered recurrent TMPRSS2-ETS gene fusions in prostate cancer using a bioinformatic outlier-analysis method. This study was the first to establish gene fusions, previously believed to be confined to hematological malignancies, as oncogenic drivers in solid tumors. The TMPRSS2-ERG gene fusion has been incorporated into the 18-gene MyProstateScore 2.0 urine biomarker test for detection of clinically significant prostate cancer.

Chinnaiyan developed the MI-ONCOSEQ program at the University of Michigan in 2011, one of the first clinical sequencing programs. MI-ONCOSEQ employs DNA and RNA sequencing to identify actionable mutations in advanced cancer patients and combines this data with clinical information to tailor treatment strategies. The MI-ONCOSEQ program has also helped reveal key insights into cancer biology, including the mutational landscape of metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer (mCRPC), the CDK12-mutant subtype of mCRPC, distinct classes of FOXA1 alterations in mCRPC, activating ESR1 mutations in endocrine-resistant breast cancer, FGFR fusions in diverse solid tumors, cancer-related long non-coding RNAs, and circular RNAs.

Chinnaiyan's research has identified therapeutically targetable epigenetic regulators and cofactors of transcription factor-driven oncogenesis, with a focus on proteins involved in driving androgen receptor activity in prostate cancer. These include BET bromodomain proteins, the SWI/SNF chromatin remodeling complex, p300/CBP histone acetyltransferases, and NSD2 methyltransferase.

His team has also defined the lipid kinase PIKfyve as a therapeutic target in multiple malignancies, including prostate cancer, pancreatic cancer, and gastroenteropancreatic neuroendocrine tumors. Publications Partial list: