Can these blood pressure drugs keep hormone therapy working longer?

Grant information

Reference: TLD-CAF25-013
Researcher: Dr Niamh McKerr
Institution: Queen's University Belfast
Award: £332,727 (funded jointly with CRIS Cancer Foundation)

What you need to know

• Some prostate cancer cells survive hormone therapy and open up tiny 'gates' on their surface that let in calcium. These gates are visible in prostate cancer biopsies, particularly in cases that are more difficult to treat.
• This project will study these cells in detail to understand why they behave this way, and test whether common blood pressure drugs that block these gates can slow or stop their growth.
• If successful, this could offer a simple, safe way to slow the growth of prostate cancer and delay it becoming resistant to treatment. 

About Dr Niamh McKerr

Dr Niamh McKerr is a cancer researcher at Queen’s University Belfast and her journey started with a degree in Biomedical Science, which she completed in 2013.  After that, she spent a few years working in a pharmaceutical lab before returning to Queen’s to begin a PhD in 2016. For this, she explored if 'gates’ that let calcium into cells become active during hormone therapy – work that helped lay the foundations for her research today. 

Since completing her PhD in 2021, Dr McKerr has been working as a postdoctoral researcher, studying how prostate cancer cells change over time and testing new ideas that could make treatments work better for longer. Her work now ranges from growing cancer 'mini‑tumours' in the lab to learning advanced computer‑based techniques that help her dig deeper into what’s happening inside these cells. Her work is embedded within the Ion Channels and Cancer programme in the McCloskey group at the Johnston Cancer Research Centre at Queen’s. She also works with doctors, international experts and men affected by prostate cancer to keep her research firmly tied to real‑world needs. 

Why are we funding this research?

Although hormone therapy can help keep prostate cancer under control, in some men the cancer cells manage to survive the treatment, adapt, and eventually cause the cancer to return, sometimes in a more aggressive form. At the moment, we don't fully understand how these cells change during treatment, which makes it hard to stop this process or develop new treatment options for men whose cancer becomes resistant. 

This project focuses on a newly discovered clue: a small group of prostate cancer cells that open calcium 'gates' on their surface during hormone therapy. These gates (known as ion channels) may help the cells grow, survive, and become less sensitive to hormone therapy. Early research shows that blocking these gates in the lab slows cancer growth and may stop the cells adopting features of aggressive disease. 

Part of what makes this project different is that Dr McKerr will explore whether common blood pressure drugs, already widely used and shown to be safe, could be used to block these gates during hormone therapy. Studying and repurposing existing treatments like this can reduce the time it takes for the benefits to reach men with prostate cancer. 

What will Dr McKerr do?

Dr McKerr’s project is all about understanding a small but stubborn group of prostate cancer cells that manage to survive hormone therapy.  

To do this, she’ll start by growing different types of prostate cancer cells in the lab and putting them under the same pressure as they’d experience during hormone therapy. This will enable her to watch how the cells change over time, and to study when the calcium ‘gates' become active.  

She’ll then take a closer look at what makes them tick. She’ll study how quickly they grow, how they behave, and what genes and signals they rely on. By comparing cells that use the calcium gate with those that don’t, she’ll build a clearer picture of their contribution to treatment resistance. 

A big part of the project is testing whether common blood pressure drugs can block these calcium gates at the right moment and stop the cancer from adapting. Dr McKerr will try these drugs on both ordinary lab‑grown cells and on 3D 'mini‑tumours’. If the drugs show promise, she’ll move on to testing them in pre-clinical models, to see whether they can slow or prevent treatment‑resistant tumours from forming. 

Finally, she’ll analyse data from anonymised health records from real men with prostate cancer, to find out whether men who already take these blood pressure drugs during hormone therapy tend to fare better. 

During this project, Dr McKerr will work closely with Professor Karen McCloskey at Queen’s, a leading ion channel physiology expert, to understand how the activity of the calcium ‘gates’ give prostate cancer cells a survival advantage during hormone therapy and assess if blood pressure drugs can slow tumour growth and delay the development of resistance. As primary mentor, she will provide academic guidance and actively support Dr McKerr’s career development. 

Dr McKerr will also spend time at the lab of Professor Natalia Prevarskaya at the University of Lille, a world‑leading expert in ion channels and cancer biology. She’ll learn advanced techniques that will help her study the properties of the gates and the cancer cells in more detail. This partnership gives her access to specialist equipment, expert feedback and a wider research network, helping strengthen and speed up the scientific progress of the project.  

How will this benefit men?

This research aims to make hormone therapy work better for longer. At the moment, some prostate cancer cells manage to survive treatment by changing how they behave, and these cells can eventually lead to the cancer returning. Dr McKerr’s work will explore new ways to delay or stop this from happening. 

By pinpointing the small group of cells that adapt early during hormone therapy and learning how they survive, the project could open the door to new approaches of tackling treatment resistance. What makes this particularly promising is that the drugs being tested are already widely used for high blood pressure, so we already know they’re safe. 

If this approach works, it could mean slower‑growing disease, and more time before needing stronger treatments. Ultimately, it could offer men a safer, more effective way to stay one step ahead of their cancer.