Tony McHale standing in his garden, smiling.

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Tony McHale (pictured above) discovered he had an alteration in the BRCA2 gene at the age of 61, putting him at a much higher risk of developing prostate cancer. Shortly after, Tony joined the IMPACT study at the ICR, which investigated whether regular screening would lead to earlier diagnosis of aggressive forms of the disease. Around 18 months later, the screening revealed Tony had prostate cancer. 

"Being involved in the IMPACT study saved my life. If I hadn't taken part, I'd never have known I had prostate cancer. As far as I was aware, I didn't have any symptoms – and the sooner the disease is detected and treated, the better the chances are of survival." – Tony
Prostate cancer affects 1 in 8 men in the UK, rising to 1 in 4 Black men
8 out of 10 men in the UK will live at least 10 years after diagnosis
Every year, 12,000 men in the UK die from prostate cancer 
Together we can help more men survive prostate cancer

Godfrey's prostate cancer story

 

DJ and music promoter, Godfrey Fletcher, found out he had prostate cancer in 2015 at the age of 47, shortly after his father had also been diagnosed.

"I was so lucky that my cancer was picked up at a very early stage. I was young and fit, with no symptoms. A year after my treatment finished, I was told it had been successful. My dad wasn't so fortunate. He was diagnosed with advanced prostate cancer and passed away at 80. His experience, and mine, showed me the importance of early diagnosis."

Why we need more research into prostate cancer

We're proud of the research advances we've made over the last 20 years. Our scientists discovered the drug abiraterone; identified genetic variants that influence risk of developing the disease; and pioneered new, more precise forms of radiotherapy. But despite our research advances, some prostate cancers remain difficult to treat. This includes those diagnosed at a later stage and those more aggressive tumours, which can spread quickly and evolve to resist treatment.

That's why we urgently need better ways to detect prostate cancer earlier, predict drug resistance, and develop smarter, more personalised treatments. Your gift will help our world-leading researchers unravel the complexity of prostate cancer, to give men precise and personalised care with the right treatments at the right time, to live longer and healthier lives.

Professor Eeles's goal is to develop new tests that could be used in prostate cancer screening, helping to identify men at a higher risk. Her team showed that a simple saliva test, carried out at home, was more accurate at identifying future risk of prostate cancer for some men than the current standard blood test. 

Building on this success, they recently launched a major new study to find out whether an improved version of this test – now suitable for more diverse groups, including Black men and younger men – can help detect more cancers earlier in men at higher risk. 

Tackling drug resistance

Our research underpinned the development of olaparib, a drug that revolutionised treatment for people with BRCA-related cancers. In a recent study, Professor Johann de Bono's team showed that changes which can be spotted with a simple blood test can reveal how long a prostate cancer patient will respond to olaparib. 

The ability to predict when – and how – patients will stop responding to olaparib could help doctors personalise treatment, and in the future, guide the development of new drugs to outsmart resistance – keeping us one step ahead of prostate cancer.

Professor Johann de Bono in the laboratory, smiling.

Creating smarter, kinder treatments for every man

Our scientists are at the forefront of precision cancer medicine – developing more effective treatments with fewer side effects.

Laboratory studies co-led by Dr Adam Sharp and Professor Johann de Bono showed that NXP800 – a new drug which targets a ‘master switch’ that cancer cells hijack to support their growth – slowed prostate cancer cell growth. This innovative drug could potentially also benefit men with advanced prostate cancer that has stopped responding to standard hormone therapy.

A study co-led by Professor Emma Hall has found that men with intermediate-risk, localised prostate cancer can be treated just as effectively with five sessions of higher-dose radiation therapy as with several weeks of standard treatment. Using stereotactic body radiotherapy (SBRT), which targets tumours with pinpoint accuracy, patients can receive a highly effective treatment with far fewer hospital visits. 

A study co-led by Professor Nick James has shown that a new artificial intelligence (AI) test can select which men with high-risk prostate cancer that has not spread will require the life-extending drug abiraterone. In the STAMPEDE trial, the team found that three out of four men could be spared unnecessary treatment, making the drug – discovered by our scientists – more affordable for the NHS.

Your gift can help every man with prostate cancer live longer, healthier lives

Help someone's dad, grandad, brother, uncle, partner, or friend survive prostate cancer. Your support will help fund life-saving research – so that every man can spend more precious time with their loved ones.

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 Related news and blogs

07/11/17 - by

Pills in blister pack

Image from PublicDomainPictures.net
 

Of every 10 potential new cancer drugs that scientists identify, only one will currently make it through the many stages of the drug development pipeline and into the clinic.

This shows that drug discovery researchers are still up against important challenges, mainly centred around the huge genetic diversity in cancer, and its ability to evolve to become resistant to treatment. 

To address these challenges, it is key that the cells scientists use to study cancer in the lab mimic features of cancer in patients as closely as possible. 

The more closely cancer cells in the lab resemble those in a patient’s tumour, the better this cell model will be able to predict how a potential new drug will affect the person’s cancer. But there is a problem here. Many of the standard-issue cells used to study cancer in the lab don’t resemble real human tumours at all. 

Instead, these cells – which have been grown on flat plastic dishes for generation after generation – have become highly adapted to the extremely artificial environment of the lab. 

So there is increasingly a move from scientists to find better lab cell models, which are able to predict more accurately whether a new drug will actually turn out to work in human patients.

Exciting new ways of studying cancer cells

Professor Raj Chopra, Head of Cancer Therapeutics at The Institute of Cancer Research, London, hosted a session at the National Cancer Research Institute (NCRI) conference to address this important issue.

Scientists at the session talked about exciting new ways of studying cancer cells taken directly from patients in 3D environments that are much closer to those found inside real patients. They used prostate cancer as one example of the limitations of traditional testing techniques – and the potential of the new ones.

Lab-grown cells traditionally used to study prostate cancer do not contain the pattern of genetic faults that is often found in patients with an advanced form of the disease for whom hormone therapy no longer works. 

Stay up to date with all our news, blog posts and video content from the NCRI conference 2017 in Liverpool.

Read more

Tiny 3D cell structures

Dr Gunther Boysen, a postdoc in Professor Johann De Bono’s lab, used tumour samples taken from patients to study new ways of treating this advanced form of prostate cancer. 

The team grew the cell samples into tiny three-dimensional cell structures called organoids, which contained the same genetic faults and looked similar under the microscope compared with the original tissue samples. 

The pattern of genetic faults varies even from patient to patient, but these organoids allowed the team to test what the effect of different drugs would be in each individual case. 

In one man with prostate cancer for whom conventional hormone therapy had stopped working, organoid tests showed that his particular form of the disease could be tackled with a drug that damages the DNA of cancer cells, called carboplatin.

In this patient, organoid tests led to a change in treatment – but organoids can also be used to test the effects of potential new drugs, and help understand how cancer evolves to become resistant to treatment.

To better recreate the environment that the tissue samples came from, it is possible to inject organoids into mice, to study the interaction with cells surrounding the tumour.

Organoid models

Somaieh Hedayat, a PhD student working in Dr Nicola Valeri’s lab, injected organoids made from patient tumour samples into mice to study how resistance to a drug called regorafenib develops. Some people with advanced bowel cancer benefit from regorafenib, which blocks blood vessel growth, but for some the drug can stop working. 

The researchers treated mice injected with tumour organoids with regorafenib, allowing them to analyse how the drug affected both the tumour and the blood vessels around it during each step of it becoming resistant to treatment.

They found that the tumour cells developed alternative ways to access the blood supply, so that they could continue to grow and became resistant to regorafenib. In the future, the organoid model developed in this study could be used to test the effect of other treatments, including newly discovered drugs, on bowel cancer and the surrounding cells. 

Traditional, two-dimensional cell models are still an important tool in the basic biology behind drug discovery, because it is easier to study how changes in their genetic make-up affect them. But three-dimensional organoids derived from tumour samples have a major advantage: they better reflect the way cancer reacts to drugs in the clinic.

These new, patient-derived cell models could help scientists test new drugs that can cope with the immense genetic diversity in cancer – and find ways to combat drug resistance. 

More ICR updates from NCRI 2017

Read more patient stories