A new double therapy to turn the immune system against prostate cancer

Grant information

Why did we fund this project?

• Advanced prostate cancer can initially be treated with hormone therapy. However, the cancer can eventually learn to ‘escape’ hormone therapy, and it stops working.
• Professor Stephen Tait's team are developing a ‘double therapy’ that could work better and for longer than hormone therapy alone.
• When cancer cells are treated with hormone therapy, they usually ‘self-destruct’ by producing special proteins called caspases.
• However, cells can also self-destruct in an alternative way that doesn’t use caspases. This is called caspase-independent cell death, or CICD.
• Importantly, the team have found CICD can stimulate the immune system to target other prostate cancer cells.
• The team think by combining hormone therapy with a new drug that causes CICD, they could stimulate the immune system to ‘mop up’ any cancer cells that have escaped hormone therapy. This could completely remove the cancer cells, reducing the risk of the cancer returning.
• In this project, the team tested the effectiveness of this double therapy in prostate cancer models.

What did the team do?

• The team tested the double therapy in a mouse model of prostate cancer, that closely resembles prostate cancer in men.
• They measured how effective the double therapy was at killing prostate cancer cells, and whether it was able to stimulate the immune system to target prostate cancer.

What did the team achieve?

• The team found that the double therapy was better than hormone therapy alone at treating prostate cancer in the mouse models.
• They showed the double therapy worked by stimulating the immune system to target prostate cancer cells, confirming that the immune system is crucial to how the double therapy works.

What does this mean for men?

• Excitingly, the team have shown that this double therapy is better at treating prostate cancer in models than hormone therapy alone.
• Following these very promising results, the team are now preparing a clinical trial to test the safety and effectiveness of this double therapy in men with prostate cancer.
• If future trials are successful, this double therapy could be approved as a new and effective treatment for men.