A Newcastle-based scientist believes a new blood test could help "stop prostate cancer in its tracks".
Dr Jennifer Munkley, a Newcastle University researcher who works at the Centre for Life, is leading work examining how a test which detects changes to sugars in our cells can improve how doctors spot and then treat the lethal illness - which has a disproportionately bad impact on men in the North East, something Dr Munkley said shocked her.
Speaking about the "dream" of working on a project that could lead to advances in the detection and treatment of cancer, Dr Munkley told ChronicleLive that though it could still take years before patients see the benefits, she was excited about how the new test could lead to new treatments for cancer, too.
Dr Munkley, 39, said: "We are really interested in the sugar molecules that coat prostate cancer cells. When you think of sugar, you tend to think of the sugar we have in our diet. But what most people don't know is that all of the cells in our bodies are covered in sugars. These have normal roles in the body - but there are changes in the sugars in cancer cells, and we have found these sugars change dramatically in prostate cancer cells.
"The current PSA test - that's the best blood test we have at the moment for prostate cancer - is used by GPs and it's reasonably good but has quite a high false positive rate. That can put people off using it for screening."
Dr Munkley said she and her team believed the new test would be more reliable than the PSA test - and that it will hopefully help them to develop new drugs to treat the cancer. She said: "What we have done is develop a test which detects the changes in these sugars. We first developed that in 2018 and 2019. It was initially funded by Prostate Cancer UK.
"We believe the blood test will be better than the PSA test. It works by taking a fresh blood sample and looking to detect three proteins which make the sugars in question. The test will detect those biomarkers, and we know that if there's a high amount there, then it's likely a person will have prostate cancer. It's a similar process as a Covid lateral flow test."
Dr Munkley - who is from Wynyard - added: "This is a dream project, it's what I have always wanted to do. It's taken quite a while to build the team and get to this stage, and it'll take quite a long time before we're able to get this to people in practice.
Dr Munkley and Dr Benjamin Schumann from Imperial College London have received £525,000 from Prostate Cancer to examine the sugar molecules, which they know cause tumours to grow and spread. The research team are now looking to find ways of blocking these sugars.
The scientist added: "This would lead to the development of new, more precise treatments that stop prostate cancer in its tracks before it has a chance to spread around the body and become incurable,” Dr Munkley said.
“We’re going to test whether existing drugs can be used to block this protein and use state-of-the-art techniques to create new drugs that target it. We’ll also work with patients to discover whether monitoring this protein will enable more personalised prostate cancer treatment."
Figures from the charity's National Prostate Cancer Audit show more than 20% of men in the North East and Yorkshire are diagnosed with cancer that has spread. That's compared to just 12.5% in London - where more patients are diagnosed when the disease is at an earlier and more treatable stage.
Dr Matthew Hobbs, director of research at Prostate Cancer UK, said: "Diagnosing men earlier and developing smarter, more targeted treatments will give us the best possible chance to stop prostate cancer being a killer and to improve the lives of men living with the disease. That’s why we’ve invested £3m into just this round of cutting-edge prostate cancer research across the UK.
“Thanks to the incredible generosity of our supporters, we’re able to work with some of the best minds in the field, bringing us closer every day to achieving this."
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