The Irish Cancer Society and the Dublin Molecular Medicine Centre today unveiled a consortium on prostate cancer research.
The initiative will allow Irish clinicians and scientists from UCD, TCD, the Mater, St Vincent's, St James's and St Luke's hospitals to collect samples of tumours from men with early stage and advanced stage prostate cancer.
Then, subject to their written approval, these samples could be deposited into a prostate cancer tumour tissue bank.
The prostate cancer bank will enhance understanding of why prostate cancer occurs, how it can be detected more efficiently, and how it can be treated more successfully.
It will also allow the clinicians and scientists to investigate why some men develop cancerous prostate glands while others experience non-cancerous growths. There are on average 1,188 new cases and 511 deaths from prostate cancer every year and the incidence of the disease is also increasing by 5 per cent annually.
The consortium hopes to collect around 300 samples over the next three years from men who have been diagnosed with the disease. It is also exploring the limitation of current treatments of prostate cancer.