Opinion: Prostate cancer screening ’in sight’

Professor Mark Emberton, Dean of the Faculty of Medical Sciences, writes about the new UCL-led trial, which is testing to see if MRI scans could be effective at screening men for prostate cancer, in a similar way to how mammograms are used to check women for breast cancer. Prostate cancer is the most common form of cancer in men with around 130 new cases diagnosed in the UK every day and more than 10,000 men a year dying as a result of the disease. Unfortunately the way we currently diagnose the disease is not very precise. Traditionally we have taken a blood test looking for raised levels of prostate-specific antigen (PSA) and carried out a trans-rectal biopsy. But PSA levels are not a reliable indicator of prostate cancer - about 75% of men who get a positive result are not found to have cancer, while it misses the cancer in about 15% of men with prostate cancer. So we currently diagnose cancers that are harmless, leading to unnecessary operations, and we miss cancers that are harmful, leaving the disease to multiple and move around the body unchecked. Is imaging the answer? The ReIMAGINE project (funded by MRC and CRUK), led by UCL and working with researchers at Imperial College, Kings College London and clinicians at UCLH is using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), to change how prostate cancer is diagnosed and treated.