A newly formed national research group, Canadian Prostate Cancer Biomarker Network, is looking for better tools to treat prostate cancer. $4 million in funding, announced today, will help researchers develop more accurate predictive tools.

“The focus of this new Canadian Terry Fox Research Institute project is on identifying the best biomarker sets that tell doctors that a newly diagnosed prostate cancer needs a treatment intervention such as surgery or radiation,” says Queen’s researcher Jeremy Squire (Pathology and Molecular Medicine), who is also a physician at Kingston General Hospital.

The group will work to identify new ways of determining what forms of prostate cancer require immediate treatment and which don’t. They will also work at better predicting which patients, post treatment (surgery or radiation therapy), are at risk of their cancer progressing.

“Some of the biological indicators may suggest new types of treatment approaches. Other biological indicators may show the new cancer is less likely to be aggressive, and the patient can be managed without intervention by an observational method called active surveillance. The overall program is developing decision tools for doctors to help them plan a more personalized approach to treating this disease.”

“We are extremely pleased to create this important biomarker research network and to provide $4 million to address an important clinical question that both doctors who treat the disease and men who are diagnosed with it must consider,” said Darrell Fox, senior advisor for the Terry Fox Research Institute (TFRI).

The funding is being provided by the Canadian Terry Fox Research Institute and the Canadian Partnership Against Cancer.