We have a bold ambition: to tame prostate cancer within a decade.
This is underpinned by our ambitious research strategy, which sets out how we will invest in the most innovative ideas to accelerate the development of new tests and treatments to benefit all men with, or at risk of, aggressive disease.
Prostate cancer is not a single disease, but is made up of many different types of cancers, each with its own specific molecular make up. As cancers grow and spread, they evolve, so detection and treatment of metastatic tumours is even more difficult than we originally thought.
This means that we need to be smarter in how we detect and treat prostate cancer at every stage. We need to develop personalised approaches for every man, and his
particular cancer.
Ultimately, we want no man to die from prostate cancer.
We want more men with aggressive prostate cancer to be diagnosed early, before it spreads outside the prostate, so that fewer slip through the net with advanced disease. We will also work towards better treatments for localised disease, and more effective, well-tolerated treatments for advanced prostate cancer.
We know that we won’t be able to do this alone, so we aim to influence (and work in partnership with) other organisations with similar goals.

Meanwhile, we will focus our resources on three key areas where we can have the biggest impact:
● better diagnosis
● better treatments
● better prevention
Tackling these three areas will make the most difference to men with, or at risk of, prostate cancer.
Importantly for a Research strategy of this scale, we can be confident that these outcomes are eminently achievable through our robust and multi-pronged research programme.
We’re excited about this challenging and ambitious journey...
We want to increase the proportion of men whose clinically significant prostate cancer is detected before it spreads outside the prostate.
And we want to reduce the number of men who undergo unnecessary biopsies, and are diagnosed with, and treated for, harmless prostate cancers.

It has so far been impossible to implement a national screening programme, or to make a reliable call for every man about whether his cancer needs treatment or not.
The reason? We don’t have a dependable, widely applicable and easy way to assess an individual man’s risk of significant prostate cancer.
We will fund research that aims to turn our knowledge of biological and genetic markers into tools to improve the diagnosis of clinically significant disease. We will also fund research to develop tests to determine whether a prostate cancer needs immediate treatment.
We will support research to develop and test a tool to predict a man’s risk of significant prostate cancer.
We will also continue to support research that would enhance such a tool. This is likely to be through discovery, validation and translation of other markers associated with the presence of clinically significant prostate cancer, and/or with an increased risk of developing it.

Ideally, we will get to a position where we only diagnose prostate cancers that need to be treated and neither diagnose, nor treat, clinically insignificant cancers.
The foundations to help us distinguish clinically significant from insignificant cancers early in the diagnostic pathway already exist. So in this area, our early focus will be on translational research.
This is where we will build strong collaborative links with other organisations and key stakeholders to help us achieve success.
There are now a number of treatments available, and more in the pipeline. But we don’t know enough about which treatments work best for each man.

We need to support research that will help stratify men according to the treatments that will work best for them.
We believe that this personalised medicine approach will be achieved by using knowledge of the molecular variations within and between prostate tumours to predict how individuals will respond to different treatments.
We will make it a priority to translate this evidence into clinical benefit as early as possible.
We will fund research into the basic biology of the disease, if it’s clear that it will add significantly to our understanding and inform future work on prevention.
We will also support research into prevention of prostate cancer recurrence after initial treatment.
A number of clinical trials into prostate cancer prevention are ongoing, and we don’t intend to duplicate these efforts by commissioning our own large-scale clinical trials. We need more information about prostate cancer prevention before we can act.

Therefore, we will keep a watching brief for scientific developments, particularly around preventative immunotherapies, dietary and lifestyle interventions, and chemoprevention strategies.
Further research into prostate cancer prevention is a longer-term priority for us. We will target this research towards men at highest risk of significant prostate cancer.
As conclusive evidence emerges, we’ll work in partnership with other funders, governments and industry to help men adopt appropriate diet and lifestyle changes that could minimise their risk of prostate cancer.