Dr. Ana Aparicio is a Professor in the Department of Genitourinary Medical Oncology. She specializes in the treatment of advanced prostate cancer. Her clinical and translational research focuses on understanding and developing novel therapies for a morphologically heterogeneous subset of androgen-indifferent prostate cancers termed the aggressive variant prostate cancers (AVPC), which share clinical and molecular features with the small cell or neuroendocrine prostate carcinomas. Through a series of prospective clinical trials and parallel studies in preclinical models, including patient derived tumor xenografts, she defined a molecular signature for the AVPC. She has shown that this AVPC molecular signature predicts for resistance to androgen signaling inhibitors and for benefit from platinum-based chemotherapies. The importance of this work lies in that it serves as the foundation for a much needed biologically-based, clinically-relevant molecular classification of prostate cancer that will increase the efficiency of clinical and translational research, permit effective and individualized treatment strategies for the lethal variants and spare patients with non-lethal variants the morbidity of unnecessary treatments.