Q&A with Marek Zorawski: Targeting RNA Assembly to Reverse Treatment Resistance in Prostate Cancer

When making a movie, a lot of content is recorded, but only the best scenes are stitched together into the final film. In our cells, a similar editing process occurs for making proteins, the building blocks of cells.

Our DNA contains all the information to create proteins — the full roll of film, so to speak — but then molecules called RNA are stitched together to form the final blueprint for making proteins. This assembly process, called RNA splicing, can go haywire in aggressive cancers.

Marek Zorawski, a graduate student at Duke University, received a 2024 PhRMA Foundation Predoctoral Fellowship in Drug Discovery for his research that targets this RNA splicing process to improve outcomes for treatment-resistant prostate cancer.

Watch this video to learn about Zorawski and his research.

Learn more about the PhRMA Foundation’s fellowship and grant opportunities. Check out more researcher stories on our blog.