PIONEERING researchers at the University of York have been given more than £536,000 to focus on treatments for prostate cancer patients.

The nationally renowned department - which is headed up by Professor Norman Maitland - will determine which treatments work best for individual prostate cancer patients, in order to give them the best chance of survival.

About one in eight men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer at some point in their lives. Prostate cancer kills over 1,000 men in Yorkshire and the Humber every year and over 4,000 are diagnosed with the disease.

The grant has been awarded by Prostate Cancer UK as part of the charity’s new £2.6 million Research Innovation Awards scheme.

Professor Maitland said: “Just like no two men are the same, every man’s cancer is individual to him and every man responds to treatment differently.

York Press:

"Through this work we want to be able to predict which treatments will be most effective for an individual by studying a sample of their cancer cells in the lab. In three year’s time we want to be in a position to develop a protocol to inform clinicians about the treatment strategy that is most likely to work best for their patients.

“We’re incredibly grateful for this grant from Prostate Cancer UK and can’t wait to get started.”

The researchers plan to not only find new ways to decide which drugs work best for each patient, but also which drugs work best for the individual cells within each patient.

Professor Maitland believes that rather than drug resistance developing over time, some of the cells that are resistant to treatments like chemotherapy are present from the very beginning – and it’s these cells that are responsible for the cancer progressing, even after an initial response to treatment.

Professor Maitland’s work is well supported in York by the annual R U Taking the P run men-only 5k run in June.