Spotlight on Research
Zoe Maylin, PhD student
responsive tumours” has shown that Oncolytic (‘cancer killing’) Viruses can be used to increase the infiltration of T cells into prostate tumours, therefore making them more responsive to immunotherapy. This successful finding means that we are now one step closer to developing better more effective immunotherapy treatments for men with prostate cancer. This project is almost at completion and will be written up for publication in the new-year. In addition Dr Nicola Annels has established new collaborations with clinicians at both the Bristol Urological Institute and the Institute of Cancer Research to set up a project investigating the reason why black men have much poorer outcomes from prostate cancer compared to other men, and to analyse the Influence that microbiomes may be playing on this racial disparity. Research involving the novel cancer agent, HTL001, which acts by disrupting a critical interaction of two proteins needed for cancer cell survival, is progressing well as a focal therapy for early prostate cancer and we hope a trial of HTL001 will commence in 2023 involving patients at the Royal Surrey County Hospital. As ever, your support is making much of this research possible, you are saving and prolonging lives through your generosity. We are proud and excited by the great strides that our scientists are making and as I mentioned earlier, an entire section of our new website will be dedicated to research.
The ‘Man Van’ might be grabbing all the headlines but with all the great news and hoopla surrounding the fundraising effort for the Mobile Testing Unit, we have not taken our eye off the ball when it comes to research. Far from it, in fact I would suggest that 2022 has been the most important and successful year for scientific research at the University of Surrey in the history of the Prostate Project. Of course, the nature of scientific research can be rather tricky to ‘translate’ into language that laymen like myself can readily grasp, for this reason I have decided to keep this section down to headlines and broad stroke explanations. However, we will be devoting an entire section of the new website to research, a space which will give us more room to cover the scientific detail. Chris Smith is a PhD student, fully funded by the Prostate Project via our friends at Univar. Chris has been the very first person to investigate the immune microenvironment of Neuroendocrine Prostate Cancer (NEPC), a form of advanced prostate cancer. Remarkably, he has discovered a novel NEPC gene signature which could be used for initial screening via a blood test, for the detection of NEPC. This gene signature is currently being patented, and as only 30% of men with advanced prostate cancer survive more than 5 years, this really is a wonderfully exciting development. The Prostate Cancer UK funded project, “Using a cancer- killing virus to transform prostate cancers into immunotherapy
44% of British people said they’re willing to receive fewer Christmas presents and instead see the money go to a good cause.
info@prostate-project.org.uk
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