Accurately spotting the difference between aggressive and slow-growing cancers
What you need to know
- When a man is diagnosed with localised prostate cancer, it can be difficult to predict how the cancer will develop and what will be the right level of treatment
- Professor Freddie Hamdy and his team will compare prostate cancer samples from 100 men with aggressive cancer and 100 men with slow-growing cancer to find a better way to tell the difference
- The team will verify their results in clinical trials of new treatments for localised prostate cancer
We believe that men with aggressive disease have unique features which could define cancer behaviour at diagnosis.
Professor Hamdy has gathered hundreds of prostate cancer samples from men who have been monitored for over a decade. This collection can help us find a more accurate way to predict how a man’s prostate cancer will develop over time.
We need to improve on existing tests
When prostate cancer is caught early, the biopsy samples are used by pathologists to give the cancer a Gleason grade. This grade is based on how the cancer looks under the microscope and helps to estimate the aggressiveness of the cancer. However, for intermediate-range cancers, typically a Gleason score of 7, it is difficult to predict how the cancer will behave and what the right level of treatment would be.
Building on a long-term study
Professor Hamdy wants to find new ways to more accurately predict which men need early aggressive treatment. From a previous study, the ProtecT trial, he has many prostate cancer biopsy samples from men as well as information on what happened to them over the next 14 years. The team will examine 100 samples from men who died from prostate cancer or where the cancer spread to the rest of the body and 100 samples from men whose cancer did not develop further.
Looking at the cancer in new ways
Using new techniques, the team will study the three-dimensional structure as well as the genetic alterations in the cancers. They will then use artificial intelligence to analyse this data and identify specific features of aggressive prostate cancer.
Once the team have identified these aggressive features, they will be able to verify the results in two clinical trials at Oxford that are testing new surgical techniques for localised prostate cancer.
We have one of the most precious mature cohorts of men in the world who participated in the ProtecT trial, and generously donated their tissue for analysis. These men have been followed up now for an average of 14 years, so the combination of the samples and known long-term outcomes places us in a unique position to interrogate their data and samples.
Grant information
Reference – MA-ETNA19-005
Researcher – Professor Freddie Hamdy
Institution – University of Oxford
Award - £678,031