Michael Gormley

My Greatest Accomplishment

Prostate cancer is common, with 239,000 men diagnosed in the United States in 2013 alone. Patients with late-stage disease have very poor prognosis and few treatment options. Janssen markets Zytiga, a drug that inhibits the production of androgens that promote tumor survival and is one of the few treatment options available for late-stage patients. My team supports drug development by creating companion diagnostic tests to identify patients who are more likely to respond to treatment. We discovered a set of genes that are correlated with a 150 times better response to Zytiga. This finding enables precision medicine, to specifically match patients with effective treatments based on genetics, environment and lifestyle.

How Drexel Helped

My graduate research under Dr. Aydin Tozeren introduced me to the fields of computational biology and bioinformatics and the skills I use every day.

Where I’ll be in Five Years

Pursuing research at the forefront of human health care, striving to develop new lifesaving therapies and innovative diagnostics to match patients with the right therapies.