Target to Slash Prostate Cancer Deaths by 20 Per Cent
The UK’s leading male cancer campaign, Everyman, is launching a strategy to slash prostate cancer deaths in the UK by a fifth in the next decade.
Prostate cancer scientists at The Institute of Cancer Research (ICR), supported by the Everyman campaign, believe studies currently in the pipeline could dramatically reduce prostate cancer deaths over the coming years.
The ambitious target has been announced to mark the launch of Everyman’s Male Cancer Awareness Month on 1 June.
Scientists hope to decrease mortality rates by developing new treatments, refining existing treatments and improving diagnostic and screening options to ensure every man who needs treatment can access it while their cancer is in an early stage.
Professor Colin Cooper, Head of the ICR’s Everyman Centre, Europe’s only dedicated male cancer research centre, says:
“We started the Everyman campaign 13 years ago to address the lack of funding and research into prostate and testicular cancer. Since then prostate cancer deaths have fallen by 10 per cent due, in part, to significant progress in understanding and treating the disease. We believe we are now on the brink of some significant breakthroughs.
“In the past two years our scientists have identified numerous new genetic variants that increase a man’s risk of developing prostate cancer, leading to a greater understanding of their susceptibility to the disease. This research will help us to more accurately calculate risk and may lead to the development of better targeted screening and treatment. We have also found a combination of three genetic abnormalities that can be tested to predict whether a man’s prostate cancer is likely to be aggressive.
“Among our exciting prospects for new treatment is the drug abiraterone, which has shown promising results in early clinical trails. We are awaiting the definitive results from the final phase of the clinical studies. Other targeted therapies are in early development and we hope that these and other drugs being studied by scientists at the ICR will make a big difference to the lives of men with prostate cancer.
“We are confident that, with an injection of funding for future research, we can save many more lives.”
Prostate cancer is the most common cancer in men. More than 35,000 men are diagnosed each year with the disease in the UK and over 10,000 men die each year from prostate cancer which is more than one man every hour. However, research into this disease is still severely underfunded. Despite there being similar numbers of deaths per year between prostate and breast cancer*, the most recent data published by the National Cancer Research Institute (NCRI) shows that prostate cancer research accounted for only 7.9 per cent of the overall spend compared to breast cancer which accounted for 18.7 per cent**.
Everyman’s aims over the next 10 years are to:
Continue to develop new drugs to treat prostate cancer and improve patient survival for this disease.
Further refine intensity modulated radiotherapy, which delivers the treatment more precisely to prostate cancer cells, improving cure rates by allowing higher doses to be used with no increase in side-effects.
Establish whether combining surgery, radiotherapy and hormone treatment extends the life of men with aggressive prostate cancer and, if so, for this to become standard treatment in the UK.
Find a large proportion of the genes that make men more susceptible to prostate cancer, and develop a programme of targeted screening for high-risk men in order to diagnose the disease at an early stage.
Develop a more accurate screening test for prostate cancer, for example measuring circulating tumour cells in combination with the existing PSA test.
Further establish the benefits of active surveillance in treating men with prostate cancer and avoid unnecessary treatment for men without aggressive disease.
Translate the genetic abnormalities identified for prostate cancer into a test that can be used in the clinic to differentiate between whether the disease is aggressive and requires treatment or slow growing requiring monitoring only.
-ENDS-
Notes to editors
*Latest UK Cancer Incidence and Mortality Summary – numbers April 2010.
http://info.cancerresearchuk.org/cancerstats/
12,000 breast cancer deaths and 10,200 prostate cancer deaths in 2008. The overall five year survival rate is 82 per cent for breast cancer patients and 77 per cent for prostate cancer patients.
**Analysis of the national cancer research portfolio 2002 – 2006.
http://www.ncri.org.uk/includes/Publications/reports/analysisReport08.pdf
