Genito-urinary cancer
The Genito-urinary cancer group is located within the Department of Experimental Haematology within the Kay Kendall Building in the Cancer Research UK Paterson Institute for Cancer Research. The Paterson Institute, along with the Christie Hospital, are part of the RAE 5*-rated Cancer Studies at the University of Manchester.
The Genito-urinary cancer group has access to a large clinical network of four hospitals (below), which provides the source of tissue samples for this study.
- Salford Royal Hope Hospital
- Christie Cancer Hospital
- South Manchester Hospital Trust
- Stepping Hill Hospital
The Christie/South Manchester/Hope/Stepping Hill Cancer Centre has one of the largest prostate cancer practices in the UK, which together handle over 1000 patients annually.
Clinical research group
The clinical research group includes 9 consultant urologists (4 urological oncologists) and 3 consultant clinical oncologists supported by research nurses in each institution and central data management at Christie. The Manchester genito-urinary clinical network forms part of the recently established North West Cancer Network. The group is also supported, at both Christie and Salford Royal Hope Hospitals, by pathologists with urological interests providing both clinical diagnoses and archived graded tissue specimens.
ProMPT
This group also forms the Manchester arm of ProMPT, the MRC-sponsored Northern (& Bristol) Prostate Cancer Collaborative. The collaborative comprises the Urological Research units of Bristol (J Donovan and S Frankel), Manchester (N W Clarke), Newcastle upon Tyne (H Leung), Sheffield (F Hamdy), York (N Maitland)and Cambridge (D Neal).
The main aims of the collaborative are:
- To study of the molecular pathology and mechanisms of disease progression
- To evaluate novel markers of disease staging/ progression and treatment approaches
- To develop novel therapeutic strategies
The collaborative has been set up in order to generate the required infra structure of interlinked biomedical, transactional, clinical and applied programmes, as well as a large bio repository of tissue, required to address the aims efficiently.
Research projects
The Genito-urinary cancer group's main field of research concerns the study of prostate cancer, in particular the nature and detection of metastatic disease. Prostate cancer is the most common malignancy found in men. In the UK alone, there are over 24,000 new cases each year resulting in 10,000 deaths each year (Cancer Research UK). Although most prostate cancers are initially sensitive to androgen ablation, they become insensitive within 2-3 years resulting in metastasis, primarily to the bone. Metastatic prostate cancer is resistant to systemic chemotherapy and radiotherapy only provides symptomatic relief. Bone metastases are directly responsible for considerable morbidity and mortality, with the median survival upon presentation of bone metastases being 18 months. It is therefore vital to understand the process of progression of primary androgen responsive tumour lesions to androgen independent metastases.
Work in the group has led to the generation of in vitro models of metastatic disease, which has enabled investigation in to the modalities of potential anti metastatic agents, and the search for prostate epithelial stem cells.
Principal investigators
| Name | Job title | Email address |
|---|---|---|
| Noel Clarke | Group Leader / Consultant Surgeon | noel.clarke@christie.nhs.uk |
| Mick Brown | Associate Scientist |
mbrown@picr.man.ac.uk |
| Claire Hart | Scientific Officer | claire.hart@manchester.ac.uk |
MD students
| Name | Project title |
|---|---|
| David Ross | Studying quantitative PCR for the study of metastatic behaviour and disease progression in prostate cancer (molecular diagnostics) |
| Richard Khafagy | Conducting a preclinical study of the effect of AZD3409 on metastatic prostate cancer (mechanism of metastasis) |
| Joanne Smith | Studying the characterisation and phenotype of the recently define prostate SP population: the quest for the prostate stem cell |
| Sanjai Addla | Isolation and characterisation of a side population from renal cell carcinoma (RCC) and bladder cancer (TCC) |
Collaborations
We are currently collaborating with the Schools of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering and Analytical Science on Spectroscopic Markers for the Prediction of Prostate Cancer Metastasis (Professor J Vickerman, Professor J Dwyer, Dr P Gardiner, Dr N Lockyer).
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