Dr. Penney's research focuses on identifying genomic predictors of prostate cancer development and progression. She is particularly interested in determining why some prostate cancers are aggressive and potentially lethal while most have an indolent course. Her previous work includes a genome-wide association study for lethal prostate cancer and the development of gene expression signatures for prostate tumor differentiation (Gleason score). Dr. Penney's current work combines different types of large-scale biological data to better understand the mechanisms linking genetics with other aspects of prostate cancer biology and molecular subtypes. Much of her research is conducted within the long-running and highly annotated Health Professionals Follow-up Study (HPFS) and Physicians' Health Study (PHS) cohorts.

With her current R01, Dr. Penney will investigate how the prostate microenvironment affects the biology of the tumor and prostate cancer survival. Her research team will comprehensively characterize prostate cancer stroma by performing RNA sequencing of tumor- and normal-associated stroma for 400 HPFS and PHS prostate cancer cases. These expression data will be linked to prostate cancer survival, Gleason score, tumor molecular subtypes, and germline genetic variants. A focus on stromal tissue is potentially transformative for clinical care by significantly adding to available epithelial molecular prognostic tests. An improved understanding of the role of the microenvironment in tumor initiation and progression may also potentially lead to the development of stroma-targeted therapies.