Gyorgy Petrovics PhD

Biography

Dr. Gyorgy Petrovics is a Research Professor and Senior Scientist at the Henry M. Jackson Foundation for the Advancement of Military Medicine in support of the Center for Prostate Disease Research (CPDR) and Murtha Cancer Center Research Program (MCCRP). He has an academic appointment at the Uniformed Services University (USU), F. Edward Hébert School of Medicine, in the USU-Walter Reed Department of Surgery.
Dr. Petrovics earned his PhD and “Doctoris Universitatis” degrees in 1992 and 1997 in Hungary, then completing a Junior Fellowship at the Max Planck Institute, Germany, a Postdoctoral Fellowship at CNRS, France, and a Fogarty Fellowship at the Douglas Lowy Laboratory, NCI/NIH, United States.
He joined the CPDR program in late 1999, recognizing several key uniqueness of the program: access to biospecimens linked to clinical data and follow up; opportunity to address racial disparity in prostate cancer in our equal access healthcare system with high representation of African American men; the multidisciplinary nature of the program and working together with people of diverse background and expertise.
Dr. Petrovics has played a key scientific leadership role in developing and accumulating valuable resources including biobank specimens and infrastructure (multidisciplinary collaborations) over 20 years at CPDR. He was the first to notice and highlight the widespread overexpression of the ERG oncogene in prostate cancer, a major prostate cancer driver gene. He also recognized early the disparate expression of ERG and other genes between African American and Caucasian American prostate tumors. He discovered that a novel prostate specific gene called PCGEM1 is a long non-coding RNA (lncRNA) gene which is preferentially expressed in prostate cancer of African American patients. Dr. Petrovics developed novel prostate cancer biomarker panels and assay platforms to translate into clinical use for the benefit of the patients. Two of these prostate cancer detection gene panels were licensed and became a clinical test (EPI test) under major insurance coverage. His contribution to CPDR grants has been over $9.1 million and had a key role as inventor in issued patents and patent applications. Dr. Petrovics has 101 publications, 81 of them on prostate cancer.
His complete publication list is available on PubMed:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/myncbi/gyorgy.petrovics.1/bibliography/public/
Dr. Petrovics goals are to contribute to the mission of CPDR by leading translational research focusing on biomarker development and precision medicine in prostate cancer, the cancer type most significantly affecting the disproportionally male military population.

Research Interest
Dr. Petrovics research interests at CPDR are focused on benefiting patients, active duty and retired military personnel and their beneficiaries, by discovering novel approaches and strategies for the development of clinically useful assays/treatments, working together with clinicians, considering patient advocates, and integrating multi-disciplinary translational research activities using biospecimen resources and patient follow up data.
Key Scientific Projects and Achievements
1. Recognition, functional characterization, and clinical utility of the ERG oncogene in prostate cancer
Dr. Petrovics most significant scientific contribution to the prostate cancer field was to discover the importance of the ERG oncogene in this disease, which is now recognized as a major prostate cancer driver gene. This developed new mechanistic insights into ERG functions and splice forms towards future targeted therapy. A major material product he developed was a prostate cancer biomarker panel, including ERG, which was licensed to Exosome Diagnostics. It is now part of a urine-based prostate cancer assay in clinical use under major insurance coverage (Blue Cross, Medicare) and is under fast-track FDA approval (received FDA breakthrough device designation).
Petrovics et al, Oncogene, 2005 (This article was highlighted in Science 310, 603 (2005); JAMA, 294, 2832 (2005); Nature Medicine 12, 14 (2006) and Nature Reviews Cancer 8, 497 (2008). Hu et al, Clin Cancer Res, 2008; Sun et al, Oncogene, 2008; Mohamed et al, Cancer Res, 2018.
2. Prostate cancer genome and health disparity in African American men
Ancestry/race related differences in ERG expression in prostate cancer was noted in his first ERG paper, which was confirmed by our definitive studies and by laboratories worldwide. Recently it was further delineated significant differences exist between prostate cancer genomes of African and Caucasian American men, including ERG and PTEN major driver genes. He co-led the discovery of genomic alterations in the LSAMP locus associated with disease progression in African American men.
Petrovics et al, EBioMedicine, 2015; Kohaar et al, Oncotarget, 2020
3. Germline mutation landscape of DNA damage repair genes (DDRGs) in African Americans with prostate cancer highlights potentially targetable RAD genes
Comprehensive whole genome sequencing (WGS) analysis revealed that specific DDRGs with germline mutations were surprisingly different between AA (N=300) and EA (N=300) patients. Potentially targetable germline mutations in RAD51, RAD54L, and RAD54B genes, as well as in PMS2 and BRCA1, were enriched in AA as compared to EA men. This data may aid in future goals of personalized medicine by enhancing the stratification of patients using new genetic tests for targeted therapeutic options, and by providing genetic counseling, specifically to high-risk families.
Petrovics et al, PCPD, 2019; Kohaar et al, Nat Comm, 2022
4. Identification and validation of prostate cancer biomarker candidates and assay platforms
Dr. Petrovics lead the development of a unique central resource of RNA and DNA banks from laser capture microdissected prostate tissue specimens linked to CPDR’s comprehensive clinico-pathological patient database. This resource was instrumental in the identification, quantitative evaluation and validation of multiple biomarker candidates resulting in over 30 papers. He directed the development of a minimally invasive prostate cancer detection assay platform in urine with a single cell sensitivity cell capture.
Sterbis et al, Clin Cancer Res, 2008; DeRosa et al, PCPD, 2012; Nickens et al, Prostate, 2015; Kohaar et al, J Urology, 2021
5. PCGEM1, a prostate specific lncRNA in prostate cancer
Dr. Petrovics main contribution was to recognize and demonstrate the non-coding nature of the gene PCGEM1, which was discovered as a prostate specific gene in our laboratory. He also discovered the preferential overexpression of PCGEM1 in prostate cancer of African American men, and characterized its effects on cell growth, apoptosis, and tumor metabolism. PCGEM1, as well as ERG, was licensed to GenProbe.
Srikantan et al, PNAS, 2000; Petrovics et al, Oncogene, 2004; Hung et al, PNAS, 2014
6. Contributions to Biobank
Dr. Petrovics has been the Director of the CAP accredited CPDR Biobank for two years, which is now consolidated under Murtha Cancer Center Research Program (MCCRP). Some of the attributes of the CPDR Biobank:
• Tissue (FFPE whole mount and frozen), blood (DNA, RNA), serum/plasma, urine specimens collected since 1996
• 30% African American patients
• Equal access military healthcare system
• Linked to patient data with long follow up time
• Decision on specimen use by our Scientific Oversight Committee

Representative Bibliography