This project aims to improve the prostate cancer pathway and support available for patients. It will tackle disparities and provide equitable access to prostate services.
What is this project addressing?
We aim to improve the prostate cancer pathway and support available for patients, tackle disparities and provide equitable access to prostate services.
There are 52,300 new cases of prostate cancer every year in the UK, affecting 1-in-8 men in their lifetime. This risk increases to 1-in-4 men if they are of African / African Caribbean heritage.
This work is part of a national pilot project which has a focus on establishing genetic testing of prostate tumour tissue samples to help identify the causes of this disease in patients. This could be useful in planning their treatment or determining if their relatives could also be at an increased risk of breast, ovarian or prostate cancer.
What are we doing?
Developing and implementing a holistic model approach linking education, research, clinical and laboratory capability with community outreach, peer patient champions, insight, oversight and support and exploring optimised testing pathways.
Who are you working with?
Led by the University Hospitals of Leicester (UHL) the ‘United Against Prostate Cancer’ project team includes representatives from a number of local and national clinical, scientific and community stakeholder groups.
We are also working closely with Prostaid and B'ME Against Cancer, and building on the foundations laid by the Centre for Ethnic Health Research for our Play Domino Talk Prostate community engagement events.
Progress and next steps
Since April 2022 we have offered testing across the whole region for:
- all affected men under 50 years of age
- those under 60 years of age with a family history
- those under 70 years of age of African/African Caribbean ancestry with metastatic disease (see infographic).
Next steps:
- Educating Urology Multidisciplinary Teams (MDTs) to support mainstreamed genomic testing pathways for prostate cancer.
- Share project learning and resources for wider adoption in other regions.
- Continue collaboration and engagement to facilitate equitable access to genomic testing across the GMSA geography.
Professor Julian Barwell, Consultant Cancer Geneticist at UHL, talks about our UAPC project, as well as other work on genetic testing, at our Showcase event in May 2023
Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nOpnX_6Myl0
Patinet story: Eddie Blair talks about his prostate cancer diagnosis, his subsequent treatment, as well as some of the work that is helping to improve survival rates
Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dYSaUsw7u0k
Meet our team
- Professor Julian Barwell, Project Lead and Clinical Consultant Geneticist, University Hospitals of Leicester (Julian.Barwell@uhl-tr.nhs.uk)
- Maria Echevarria, Project Genetic Counsellor (maria.echevarria@uhl-tr.nhs.uk)
- Jo Lowry, East GMSA Regional Programme Manager (jo.lowry@uhl-tr.nhs.uk)
