Finding out how prostate cancer hijacks the lymph nodes to spread around the body

Grant information

Researchers: Professor Hing Leung, Professor Stephen Pennington, Dr Ke Yuan and Dr Ed Roberts
Institution: University of Glasgow
Award: £1,450,765
Reference: MA-TIA22-001

Why did we fund this project?

• Prostate cancer can spread, or 'metastasise', to other parts of the body. This makes the cancer harder to cure.
• When cancer metastasises, it usually first spreads to small organs called lymph nodes, which can act as a 'portal' to allow it to spread further around the body.
• The team want to understand how prostate cancer cells interact with the cells in the lymph nodes, and how these interactions help the cancer spread.
• The researchers hope unravelling these interactions will lead to the discovery of new treatment targets to stop the spread of cancer, as well as new ways to identify which men are at high risk of their cancer spreading.

What will the researchers do?

• The team will study how prostate cancer cells interact with lymph nodes. They hope to identify how these interactions help cancer to spread beyond the prostate.
• To do this, the team will analyse samples from men who had their prostate and lymph nodes removed, as well as using lab models to study how the cancer cells spread.
• Using advanced computer programs that can learn and find patterns, the team hope to discover new features in the cancer cells that can predict how well men will respond to treatment.

How will this benefit men?

• This research will improve our understanding of which tumours are more likely to spread to the lymph nodes. Men with these tumours could then get a treatment that is more tailored to them, to reduce the risk of their cancer spreading.
• The team also wish to shed more light on how prostate cancer uses lymph nodes to spread around the body. This could lead to treatments that are designed to disrupt the process and so prevent prostate cancer from spreading.