Scientists in the capital are developing a blood test that could save hundreds of thousands of men a year from painful biopsies to test for prostate cancer.
The “liquid biopsy” looks for changes in the appearance of DNA after it has become cancerous and aims to be much more accurate in determining if a patient has prostate cancer and whether a tumour is benign or aggressive.
Every year, about 200,000 men have a biopsy — which involves inserting a needle up to 20 times in the rectum or perineum to take small samples of tissue from the prostate gland — after a prostate specific antigen blood test has revealed higher than expected levels of protein.
Dr Andrew Feber, from University College London, said: “The PSA test, which is the current ‘gold standard’, is still really inaccurate. About three quarters of men who are diagnosed with raised PSA won’t have cancer.
“We want to try to find a better way of identifying men who really do have cancer. We are not trying to replace biopsies but we are looking to reduce the number who need a biopsy.”
The research team has been awarded £334,000 by Prostate Cancer UK and the Movember Foundation. They hope that their three years of work will result in a large clinical trial, which could lead to the new test — which would also be faster and cheaper — being introduced within about five years.
The test seeks chemical changes in cells after they become cancerous, rather than changes or mutations in DNA code.
The pattern of these changes reveals whether the DNA is from the prostate or another organ, whether it is normal DNA or cancer DNA and if the cancer is aggressive.
Dr Iain Frame, director of research at Prostate Cancer UK, said: “The quest for better and more reliable prostate cancer diagnostic tests has long been a challenge for researchers.
“Current techniques are plagued with complexities. The PSA blood test can give false positive and false negative results and it can fail to distinguish between cancers that will go on to kill and those that may never cause any harm.
“Finding a more sophisticated blood test, or ‘liquid biopsy’, is one of the most promising areas of prostate cancer research.
“If successful, Dr Feber’s work could offer a much quicker, cheaper and less invasive test, while saving thousands of men from unnecessary biopsies and catching cases of deadly cancer sooner.
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