Researchers unite to battle prostate cancer

Six major Irish research institutes joined forces today to launch an initiative to help in the fight against prostate cancer.

The new consortium of experts from two universities and four hospitals aims to build up a bank of cancerous tumours to enable them to be examined and treatments considered.

The project will allow scientists from University College Dublin, Trinity College Dublin, the Mater, St Vincent’s, St James’s and St Luke’s hospitals, to collect samples of tumours and deposit them in a tissue bank.

The building of this prostate cancer tumour bank will then allow an investigation into why some men develop cancerous prostate glands while others experience non-cancerous growths.

There are on average 1,188 new cases and 511 deaths from prostate cancer every year in Ireland and the incidence of the disease is also increasing by 5% annually.

The Prostate Cancer Consortium hopes to collect about 300 samples over the next three years from men who have been diagnosed with prostate cancer.

The tumour samples will then be screened for characteristic proteins and compared to normal tissue.

The scientists will then try to also detect these proteins in the blood and urine of men with prostate cancer.

If they can detect these proteins in the blood and urine, they will then have identified a ‘biomarker’ or indicator that someone has prostate cancer without the need for the extraction of tumour tissue.

Dr Bill Watson, Senior Lecturer at the Department of Surgery of Dublin’s Mater Hospital, said the scheme was an important step in the battle against the disease.

“This new research will allow us to come up with better markers that will allow us to detect the disease earlier and with more certainty than currently possible and if we detect the disease earlier, we will have a better chance of successfully treating and curing it,” he added.