Prostate cancer represents a significant health care problem due to the dilemmas associated with its detection and treatment especially with the projected increase in its incidence in Ireland and internationally. The research team, who have been working together on novel statistical approaches and biomarker discovery/validation projects for treatment selection for prostate cancer, will further develop their collaboration to address another important clinical question of informing the need for a biopsy in the development of appropriate risk calculators at the time of diagnosis. This clinical question has been driven by the needs of the urologist and patients attending the rapid access clinics recently established by the National Cancer Control Programme. We propose that current clinical parameters combined with appropriate biomarkers will inform the need for a biopsy. This will impact on the patients outcome and quality of life but also alleviate the pressures on our already over burdened health care sector by reducing the need for biopsies. We hypothesise that the predictive accuracy of risk calculators will be significantly improved when built from the relevant population and that additional biomarkers will add further accuracy. This hypothesis will be further investigated under five objectives:
1. Set up a central database of the clinical data from the national cancer control programme rapid access clinics.
2. Collect Serum and Urine samples from a subset of these patients accessing these national rapid access clinics.
3. Using the collected bio-resource test for current and novel biomarkers
4. Build a national risk calculator using appropriate statistical tools and the relevent patient information and measured biomarkers.
5. Develop a national risk calculator incorporating appropriate biomarkers which would be updated in real time resulting in a refinement and improvement of the model over time.
