Blog

Early Prostate Cancer Detection Builds Clinical Trial Base

April 9, 2013

One of Canary’s major research areas is early detection of prostate cancer, as well as differentiating types of prostate cancer. Our clinical trial, PASS (Prostate Active Surveillance Study), has 880 enrolled toward the goal of 1000 participants enrolled with each person receiving five years of follow-up study.

Ultimately, Canary Foundation maintains that the medical community would like to be able to tell a patient if his prostate cancer is an aggressive or lethal form so that it can be treated, while avoiding unnecessary treatment for those patients who do not have an aggressive form of the disease (and therefore sparing those men of the side effects of surgery or other treatments, which includes potential incontinence and impotence).

PASS is increasingly recognized as a strong resource for studies of the types of biomarkers that distinguish aggressive cancer.  Men with early-stage cancer are enrolled and followed closely for signs that their cancer is progressing, while donating specimens for research.  Some men will have cancer that progresses and some will not, and the Canary-led science team will have specimens collected over the years from both groups.

Because it is a high quality resource, PASS is attracting collaborations with scientists and companies who have promising markers to validate.