TRANSFORM trial
What is TRANSFORM?
Prostate Cancer UK’s Trial of Randomised Approaches for National Screening FOR Men – known as TRANSFORM – is a £42 million research programme to find the best way to screen men for prostate cancer, so one day all men at risk are invited for regular tests to find aggressive cancers in time for a cure.
This is urgently needed. 12,000 men die of prostate cancer each year. It is the most common cancer in the UK without a screening programme, even though it usually has no symptoms until it has spread and become incurable.
TRANSFORM begins!
After careful preparation and regulatory review, TRANSFORM has now opened and the first invitation letters are being sent to men.
Those recruited will form part of the initial 16,000 men taking part in Stage 1, which will test four of the most promising screening strategies, including PSA blood tests, a polygenic risk test and fast, bi-parametric MRI scans. The most effective strategy, or strategies, will then be tested in a much larger group of up to 300,000 men making it the biggest prostate cancer trial launched in more than two decades.
TRANSFORM is registered on the ISRCTN clinical study registry, where further information about Stage 1 can be found.
A new opportunity for prostate cancer research
As part of the ambitious programme, a valuable new prostate cancer research resource will be formed. Known as TRANSFORM Discovery, the repository will integrate biological samples with high-resolution imaging, digitised pathology, genetic data and clinical information from consenting men participating in the TRANSFORM trial to create the National Prostate Cancer Bio-Digital Twin.
This will accelerate the development and clinical translation of new biomarkers at a scale and pace not seen before to help transform care and outcomes for people with prostate cancer.
TRANSFORM Discovery will fuel the next generation of precision prostate cancer screening and early detection, enabling
- validation of novel biomarkers, including genomics, proteomics, and imaging markers
- AI-driven risk modelling and personalised screening strategies
- deep phenotyping of prostate cancer and its precursors
- accelerated translational research by providing open, high-quality, longitudinal datasets to scientists and innovators.
TRANSFORM Discovery is designed not just to support current research, but to future-proof screening innovations for decades.
The programme is open to collaboration and actively seeks to connect with companies developing and validating early detection biomarkers, fostering partnerships that can accelerate progress toward earlier and more accurate diagnosis.
Find out more about TRANSFORM Discovery
In July 2024, TRANSFORM Discovery Lead, Professor Rakesh Heer, hosted a webinar introducing plans for the development and uses of the resource.
Professor Heer and team are keen to hear from research colleagues who can see immediate or future uses of the tissue and data collection in their work.
Further information can be found on the Heer Group website along with an Expression of Interest Form.
To contact the TRANSFORM Discovery team directly, please email [email protected]
