Andrew J. Armstrong, MD, MSc

Andrew J. Armstrong, MD, MSc, is a tenured professor of medicine, surgery, and pharmacology and cancer biology, Duke University School of Medicine, and director of research, Center for Prostate and Urologic Cancers, Duke Cancer Institute. Dr Armstrong is a medical oncologist and an internationally recognized expert in experimental therapeutics and biomarker development in genitourinary (GU) cancers, particularly in prostate cancer. He trained at Duke as a biomedical engineer, received his medical degree from the University of Virginia, his medicine residency training at the University of Pennsylvania, and his fellowship and public health clinical investigation training at Johns Hopkins and the Bloomberg School of Public Health. He joined Duke’s faculty in 2006.

As a clinical and translational investigator, he is focused on experimental therapeutics for patients with advanced GU malignancies, with a particular focus on prostate and kidney cancers and on the investigation of biomarkers of response and benefit, both in the laboratory and in the clinic. He is funded by the US Department of Defense, the Prostate Cancer Foundation/Movember, and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for his work on hormone therapy resistance, circulating tumor cell biology, and epithelial plasticity. Dr Armstrong led the development of enzalutamide and the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval for men with metastatic prostate cancer, and he studies hormone resistance in the laboratory and ways to overcome this in the clinic, as well as the development of abiraterone plus olaparib in BRCA2-mutated metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer. He has been a key investigator for several radioligand therapy trials in prostate cancer, including the VISION, PSMAfore, and PSMAddition trials.

He is a Prostate Cancer Foundation, American Association for Cancer Research, and American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Young Investigator Award recipient. He cochairs the Prostate Cancer Working Group 3 and the Prostate Cancer Working Group 4, which establish guidelines for clinical research in advanced prostate cancer, and has been a leading writing member of the NCCN Prostate Cancer Panel since 2012 for national clinical guidelines on the treatment of men with prostate cancer.

Dr Armstrong has developed a number of experimental agents in prostate and renal cell cancers, including completed or ongoing trials of AR inhibitors (ARCHES, PREVAIL, AFFIRM, STREAM, Abi Race, PANTHER, AbiRT, and A031201 trials), AR degraders, and PARP inhibitors (PROpel trial lead principal investigator). He has also led trials involving immunotherapies (sipuleucel-T, anti-STEAP1 bispecific T-cell engagers, ICIs, and CXCR2 inhibitors), mTOR/PI3K inhibitors, and antiangiogenic agents. In addition, he is heavily involved in the leadership of multiple ongoing phase 1 to 4 treatment and biomarker trials in men with advanced prostate cancer, including serving as correlative science clinical trial chair within the National Cancer Institute (NCI) ALLIANCE Cooperative Group in the Genitourinary Committee. Dr Armstrong led the multicenter PROPHECY trial, establishing the predictive utility of circulating tumor cell AR-V7 and other liquid biopsy assays in men with metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer.

He has authored more than 300 peer-reviewed publications, as well as numerous chapters, reviews, and abstracts. He leads a team at Duke of more than 40 research nurses, coordinators, data managers, regulatory specialists, scientists, and investigators dedicated to discovery science in GU cancers in the laboratory and treatment science in the clinic. Dr Armstrong is a mentor to many students, post-docs, and fellows, and he participates in the ASCO mentoring program. As an R01-funded clinical/translational investigator, he has mentored more than 20 medical oncology fellows and junior faculty, as well as many residents and students, in the clinic, for clinical trials, and for laboratory training.