The prime objectives are:-

1) To improve detection of high-risk CaP and patients at increased risk-of-relapse at diagnosis.

2) To improve detection of patients with localised high-risk or metastatic CaP sensitive to treatment with radiotherapy and/or conventional DNA-damage chemotherapeutics, respectively, using tissue and/or liquid biopsy samples.

3) To understand the genetic and biological basis of response, resistance and/or toxicity to external beam radiotherapy (EBRT) and brachytherapy treatment for localised CaP, or DNA-damage chemotherapy in metastatic disease.

4) To characterise novel biologically-based interventions that enhance therapeutic response to EBRT and brachytherapy for localised high-risk CaP or DNA-damage agents in metastatic disease.

5) To understand the bio-physical parameters predicting for relapse in high-risk localised CaP.

6) To understand the bio-physical mechanism-of-action of Radium-223 in oligometastatic and overt metastatic CaP in bone marrow.

7) Use patient blood and tissue samples to develop clinically-applicable predictive biomarkers of Radium-223 sensitivity and markers to detect/monitor radionuclide response.

8) To catalyse the application of scientific discovery to underpin innovative, personalised cancer medicine trials for DNA-damage treatments in high-risk and oligometastatic CaP.

This brings together clinical and pre-clinical researchers from across PGJCCR and the Cancer Centre within City Hospital to achieve these goals. Notable achievements in the first five years of the Centre of Excellence include:-

• Development of a clinically-applicable assay to detect “High-Risk” disease at diagnosis
• Development of a clinically- applicable assay detecting patients sensitive to use of radiotherapy or DNA-Damage chemotherapy (locally-advanced/metastatic disease)
• Development of three innovative biomarker-guided, biologically informed clinical trials aimed at optimising use of DNA-damage therapy in biomarker-informed high risk Ca eg. ADRRAD (29 of 30 patients recruited); RAD-IAP (Phase I combination study open to recruitment Q2 2019).
• Development of new annotated tissue repositories and prostate cancer models to assist research
• Enhanced understanding of the biological evolution of treatment resistance through inflammatory and other stress response pathways.

Since the Centre began a number of talented young academics have been recruited with interests in molecular imaging (eg. PSMA) and the epigenetic and metabolic targeting of prostate cancers which will further enhance the work of the Centre as it enters its second-phase of funding.  The success of the Centre has also led to the establishment of new collaborative networks in the UK and Australia which will further accelerate the impact of this work.