What began as a conversation between investigators during a CAIRIBU K12 Scholar Seminar evolved into a collaborative center addressing one of benign urology research’s biggest challenges: understanding how different experimental models can better represent benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH) and lower urinary tract dysfunction.

Since its inception, the P20 FORWARD Center at Endeavor Health has exemplified how mentorship and great science shape careers and advance a field. Principal Investigator Dr. Simon Hayward alongside Co-Is Drs. Renee Vickman, Petra Popovics, and Nadia Lanman bring expertise spanning translational models of disease progression, immunology, and computational biology.

For Dr. Hayward, the purpose of the P20 FORWARD mechanism is straightforward. “The real idea,” he explained, “is to try and get these junior investigators independently funded and moving along.” He added, “Having someone like me doing the official grumpy old fart bit simply protects the early-stage investigators from losing their ESI status by being PI of this grant.”

So far, both Drs. Vickman and Popovics have secured R01 funding during their time with the Center. For biomedical researchers, receipt of R01 funding marks a milestone signifying scientific success and true independence.

Dr. Vickman’s work focuses on how inflammation contributes to BPH progression and urinary symptoms, particularly the role of Trem2 macrophages in prostate enlargement and disease severity. Her newly funded R01 seeks to understand why these immune cells accumulate in the prostate and whether targeting them could reduce hyperplasia and its associated symptoms.

In competing for an R01, she found “[the] biggest challenge was having the data to back up the big idea.” The P20 structure helps investigators bridge this data gap by offering protected space to generate foundational data that may not fit into traditional R01 mechanisms. For Dr. Vickman, the Center did just that by providing time and scientific infrastructure that strengthened her proposal. For Dr. Popovics, whose R01 seeks to elucidate the role of lipid accumulation and foam cells in BPH, the Center allowed her to generate preliminary data that helped establish the feasibility and importance of her proposed aims.

Just as important, Dr. Vickman emphasized, was the mentorship environment surrounding the project. “Simon is really good at making sure people know who we are,” she noted. “Introducing us, giving us opportunities to speak, making sure we have a space in the benign urology research world.”

Dr. Hayward credits much of his own mentorship philosophy to guidance he received from mentors earlier in his career. “You should be having fun,” he recalled one mentor telling him. “Because you can be miserable for more money.”

The advice might sound lighthearted, but it reflects a deeper philosophy shared by the rest of the team: successful science depends on curiosity and the freedom to pursue interesting questions rather than rigidly following predetermined paths.

“If you’re doing exactly what you said you’d be doing in year five of an R01,” Dr. Hayward joked, “either you’ve got no imagination or something’s gone terribly wrong.”

That openness to exploration is evident throughout the center’s research portfolio. For example, in addition to studying foam cells and the role of lipid accumulation in BPH, Dr. Popovics investigates how environmental factors such as sleep fragmentation may contribute to disease pathogenesis. She is also interested in exploring how BPH patients might eventually be phenotyped more precisely rather than treated as a homogeneous population.

“We’re viewing BPH as one disease,” she explained, “when we don’t even know if the pathology is the same behind it.”

When asked if she had any practical advice for more junior investigators, Dr. Popovics offered “If you are able to join a review section as an early career investigator, that’s one of the most useful things you can do.” She emphasized the value of viewing an application from a grant reviewer’s perspective and noted, “some of the critiques are very universal, and these things are really easy to address.”

To tackle the ambitious goal of determining the best mouse model for BPH research, the team draws from Dr. Nadia Lanman’s expertise as a computational biologist. Her skillset, distinct from traditional wet-lab biology expertise, has enabled her to transform massive sequencing datasets into tools that can answer translational questions about disease progression and model systems.

Dr. Lanman shared some novel methods the Center is developing. One of those methods involves “transcriptomic distance,” a computational framework designed to determine which mouse models most closely resemble human BPH at the cellular level. Rather than treating entire tissues as uniform systems, the approach allows investigators to compare individual cell populations across species and identify which components of a model most accurately capture human disease biology.

 “What could end up being true,” Dr. Lanman noted, “is that maybe there’s a certain mouse model for some aspects and a different mouse model for other aspects of studying the disease.”

Dr. Lanman is also working to develop a web-based application that will allow other researchers without extensive computational expertise to interact with the Center’s sequencing datasets and compare their own findings against P20-generated data.

When asked about her experience joining the CAIRIBU community as a computational biologist Dr. Lanman shared, “I am a little bit of an outsider… in the field. [The CAIRIBU Annual Meeting] was small enough that I got to…meet people that I wouldn’t have met ordinarily. Making some of those connections and meeting folks who have background in areas that I don’t have has been really useful.”

Outside their researcher roles, Co-Is at the P20 FORWARD Center lead busy lives. When asked about work-life balance, they spoke candidly about how they manage their scientific careers and daily lives.

Dr. Vickman shared, “Doing science makes me happy. Being a wife, a mom, having a personal life makes me happy, so I make it work.”

Overall, speaking with P20 FORWARD leaders revealed something beyond an individual project or funding milestone. The P20 FORWARD mechanism does not simply train early-stage investigators, it helps shape a research culture that values curiosity, interdisciplinary collaboration, and human connection as much as scientific discovery.

Fittingly, the project itself was born through CAIRIBU connections. According to Dr. Vickman and Dr. Popovics, the earliest discussions that ultimately formed the springboard for the P20 FORWARD Center emerged after a CAIRIBU K12 Scholar seminar presentation in 2023. Dr. Vickman recalled overlapping scientific interests sparking conversations about macrophages, experimental models, and translational relevance. Over time, these discussions expanded into a broader vision examining how different BPH models could answer scientific questions for the field.

For CAIRIBU, the P20 FORWARD Center at Endeavor Health represents the kind of collaborative ecosystem this community was designed to foster. The foundations that mentorship and scientific conversation laid for later research infrastructure and funded collaborations proved critical in growing early-stage investigators into independent leaders in the field.