Prostate cancer invasion and spread

While prostate cancer is restricted to the prostate it can be cured with surgery or radiotherapy, but once it has spread beyond the prostate it is hard to treat. Therefore it is crucial to understand how and why the prostate cancer cells spread, so that we can design treatment to delay or prevent this happening.

We have identified mutations in a gene that helps to control cell movement. We believe that the cancer cells have hi-jacked this gene to help them spread. We have found mutations in nearly half of the cancers restricted to the prostate, and nearly all the ones that have spread, suggesting that the mutations might be helping the cancer cells spread. One of the mutations is very common and might make a good target for therapy.

Our aim is to find out how the mutations alter the behaviour of the cells. Once we know precisely what the mutations do to the cells and their migration, we can then start to develop drugs to attack the cancer cells carrying a mutation to slow down or prevent spread.