Improving prostate cancer treatment to minimise side effects
Background
Prostate cancer affects one in five Australian men, and is particularly common in men over 65. Therapies that target the entire prostate gland are current best practice. However, these therapies can cause side effects including reduced urinary and sexual function.
Focal therapy is a new, minimally invasive approach which aims to leave the healthy tissue surrounding a tumour intact and so minimise side effects. It is suitable only for men with small localised prostate tumours but some men (around 13%) receive focal therapy inappropriately because methods to assess the extent of their tumour are flawed. This means additional and emerging tumours can be missed, increasing the odds of the man having a poor outcome. So, there is a need for more sensitive and accurate diagnostic tests to correctly select men for focal therapy.
The research
This project focuses on ways to better assess the extent of prostate tumours and so improve the selection of men who would benefit from focal therapy. The work is based on assessing chemical alterations known as epigenetic changes that differ between cells in the tumour and tumour microenvironment compared to cells in normal tissue. It targets epigenetic changes at multiple genes to increase diagnostic sensitivity.
The impact
It’s hoped the project will lead to clinical trials of a test to ensure the right patients receive and benefit from focal therapy for prostate cancer. This ultimately means better cancer control whilst minimising side effects. In the long-term, the work may also help to improve monitoring and classification of prostate cancer patients for a range of different treatments. And it may improve diagnosis of other cancer types where similar epigenetic changes exist in the microenvironment around tumours, to those seen in prostate cancer.