Quickly identifying which treatments work best

Grant information

Institution – University College London
Researchers – Professor Jayne Tierney
Grant award - £465,180
Duration of funding – 2018-2024
Status - Complete
Reference – RIA16-ST2-020

Why did we fund this project?

• There are lots of clinical trials looking at the effect of new treatments for men whose cancer has spread beyond the prostate but still responds to hormone therapy.   
• This is important because we want to give the right treatments to the right men at the right time, to make sure men get the most benefit from treatments with the fewest side effects.
• Professor Jayne Tierney and her team planned to carry out in-depth analysis of the results of multiple trials at the same time, including collecting individual patient data on the men taking part in the trials.  This would allow them to quickly identify the most effective treatments, and find out which treatments are most likely to benefit which men. 

What did the team do?

• Anonymised patient data were collected on men taking part in clinical trials worldwide.
• Results from these trials were reviewed to find out if some men benefited more than others from each treatment. 
• The team also investigated whether earlier measures of a treatment's effectiveness could be used to predict whether it would help men live longer.

What did the team achieve?

• The team discovered that adding prostate radiotherapy to standard hormone therapy is effective for men whose cancer has only spread to a small number of areas beyond the prostate.
• They also found that adding the chemotherapy drug docetaxel to standard hormone therapy benefits men whose cancer has spread to a larger number, or bigger areas, beyond the prostate. 
• Early measures were identified that reliably predict if a treatment will help men live longer, which could shorten the length of future clinical trials by around 2 years. 

What does this mean for men?

• The evidence produced by this groundbreaking research has changed national and international guidance on treatment options for men with cancer that has spread beyond the prostate and still responds to hormone therapy. 
• This new guidance means that men can choose the treatments that are likely to work best for them, and can avoid the side effects of treatments that are unlikely to be effective.

• Furthermore, the methods developed during this analysis could help shorten the length of future clinical trials so that new treatment options become available to men more quickly. 
• The STOPCAP database of anonymised patient data will continue to be updated, and used by researchers around the world to develop new advances in our understanding of prostate cancer and its treatment.