A team of tireless Maitland volunteers have played an integral part in the development of a new treatment preventing the spread of prostate cancer.
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Funds raised through the Maitland Cancer Appeal have supported a trial into a powerful new cancer treatment that can reduce the spread of aggressive tumours by more than 40 per cent.
The five-year follow up results of the Trans-Tasman Radiation Oncology Group (03.04 RADAR) trial give Australian and New Zealand men with newly diagnosed cancer a better chance of survival without increased long term side effects.
“It’s hugely exciting to find a treatment combination that can cause such a large reduction in the spread of high-grade prostate cancer with limited side effects,” lead author the study Professor Jim Denham said.
The study is published on Friday in the prestigious journal The Lancet Oncology.
“Such a result is obviously of massive importance to newly diagnosed men with localised but aggressive prostate cancer, their partners and their families.”
The RADAR trial enrolled 1071 men with newly diagnosed aggressive but localised prostate cancer between 2003 and 2007 from 23 centres across Australia and New Zealand.
During the trial all men received six months of testosterone suppression therapy followed by radiotherapy.
The results - the first to be reported from the ongoing RADAR trial - were also presented at the premier cancer conference in Chicago in June.
The trial has been supported by National Health and Medical Research Council grants and funding from other sources including the Maitland Cancer Appeal, the University of Newcastle, Calvary Mater Hospital, the Hunter Medical Research Institute along with Novartis Pharmaceutcials and Abbvie Pharmaceuticals.