Medical Appointment Doctor Adobestock 221801473

Looking for aggressive prostate cancer

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Grant information

Researcher - Dr Ferdia Gallagher
Institution - University of Cambridge
Grant award - £49,930.00
Grant duration - 2015-2020
Reference - PA14-012

Why did we fund this project?

  • Understanding how aggressive each man's cancer is, helps guide decisions about which treatments will be best.
  • Currently, aggressiveness is determined using a prostate biopsy. Scans, such as MRI scans, are not sensitive enough to accurately determine how aggressive prostate cancer is.
  • Cancer cells tend to grow faster than non-cancer cells, and so use more energy. These differences get bigger as cancer becomes more aggressive.
  • This project tested a new way of determining how aggressive a man's prostate cancer is. It involves measuring how much energy cells are using, by injecting a type of energy molecule with a special label that can be detected by MRI scans. 

Project in a nutshell

mpMRI before biopsy
  • The team aimed to use their technique to identify ‘energy fingerprints’ of cancer cells, and how this changed in more aggressive cancers.
  • They wanted to know whether their technique could distinguish aggressive from low-risk prostate cancers.

What did the researchers do?

  • Ferdia and team took scans of men with prostate cancer using their new technique. These men later had a prostatectomy as part of their usual treatment.
  • They compared the scans produced by their new technique, to the prostate tissue taken from the men, to see if the aggressiveness suggested by the scans matched the tissue.

What did the researchers achieve?

Medical Appointment Doctor Adobestock 221801473
  • The team found that their new technique can distinguish low risk disease from aggressive cancers.
  • The team have also shown that the technique can help identify patients who are at high risk of their disease coming back after treatment.
  • The team are now working with colleagues at University College London to carry out a trial to see how effective this technique is in larger numbers of men.

How will this benefit men?

  • The team have shown their technique can distinguish more aggressive disease from low-risk disease, though in a small number of men. This could help guide treatment decisions, and prevent men with low-risk cancer experiencing unnecessary biopsies and side effects.
  • The team now want to undertake a larger study to see if this technique could benefit all men with prostate cancer.
  • The team have also shown their technique may help predict whether cancer is likely to return after treatment. This could help determine which men need further treatment to stop their cancer coming back.

With your help we can beat prostate cancer, together

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