The Prostate Cancer Foundation's Young Investigator awards encourage the most innovative minds in cancer research to investigate prostate cancer. The Foundation awards selected researchers with $225,000 over three years to help support their research on prostate cancer treatment and patients.One of the selected researchers, Dr Yap and his mentor Professor Johann de Bono, decided to investigate Circulating Tumor Cells (CTCs) that have broken away from an existing tumor and entered into the blood stream.
The team's earlier studies indicated that doctors were able to monitor the level of patient response to new drugs by measuring the levels and molecular characteristics of CTCs in the patients' blood. At present, doctors have to rely on techniques that are slow to reveal results and may lead to other complications, such as imaging or biopsy, or PSA tests that are not always reliable, in order to evaluate whether a drug is efficient.
Dr. Yap explains:
"This blood test could be used to confirm that the drug is benefiting a particular patient; and, if not, they can be moved quickly to an alternative therapy. This would also mean they suffer fewer side effects from unnecessary treatments and expensive new drugs are not given to patients they cannot help. I am grateful and honored to have received this prestigious award, which will enable us to assess this test in a large-scale clinical trial
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