Nation-first living lab ready to tackle deadly cancer

More than 25,000 Australian men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer this year.

A ground-breaking living lab of metastatic prostate cancer has been established so researchers can discover better treatments for the deadly disease.

The Australian Living Lab for Urological Repositories, also known as ALLURe, will expand on existing biobanks by including specimens and data from men who had their prostate cancer spread.

Researchers from across Australia will be able to access the lab, analyse deadly tumours and test new methods for preventing and eliminating them.

“This will make a really significant difference,” Prostate Cancer Foundation of Australia chief executive Anne Savage told AAP.

“Building a database of living tissues is incredibly important – being able to understand how prostate cancer functions for different men, what it does, how it behaves.

“This will allow us to study the disease in more detail, to get an understanding of the patterns of disease and to, importantly, help us find out what’s making prostate cancer spread.”

More than 25,000 Australian men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer this year, with close to 4000 dying from the disease.

Survival rates have improved over the decades, rising from 58 per cent in the 1980s to about 95 per cent now.

The goal was to eliminate avoidable deaths from prostate cancer and eventually eradicate the disease altogether, Ms Savage said.

“We know we can get to a point where it becomes a chronic disease that is no longer life limiting,” she said.

“That’s really what we want to strive for as quickly as we can while we continue to work for ways of completely preventing it.”

The Prostate Cancer Foundation of Australia provided seed funding for ALLURe, with hopes the lab can be fast-tracked to open in the new year.

“But to build it over time, we will need to raise significantly more,” Ms Savage said.

“We’re hoping that community donations this Christmas to the Prostate Cancer Foundation of Australia will allow us to do that.

“We know that many men in our community will be as excited about this project as we are because it does provide us with the very best hope we have of ultimately defeating the disease.”