Research theme Urological cancers

Urological cancers About theme

The mission of the theme Urological cancers is solving the diagnostic and treatment dilemmas for prostate, kidney, and bladder cancer by (i) finding biomarkers that can accurately indicate patients with localized tumors who will ultimately develop progressive disease; (ii) finding pre-treatment biomarkers that can identify patients who are expected to respond to specific therapies; (iii) developing and evaluating new diagnostic and treatment modalities with better efficacy and less mutilating effects.

Every year, almost 20,000 people are diagnosed with a urological tumor in the Netherlands: 7000 cases of bladder cancer, 3000 patients with kidney and ureter cancer, and 10,000 with prostate cancer. The prognosis is quite good for patients who are diagnosed with a localized tumor, but prospects are still poor for patients who developed metastasized disease. Consequently, over 5,000 people die annually from urological cancers. In the treatment of urological cancers, a number of unmet clinical needs exist. Two of these are the absence of markers that can accurately indicate patients with localized tumors who will ultimately develop progressive disease and the absence of pre-treatment markers that can identify patients who will respond adequately to specific therapies. Next to this, it remains important to develop and evaluate new diagnostic and treatment modalities with better efficacy and less mutilating effects. Especially in the field of prostate cancer, there is also a clear need for a marker that can better distinguish insignificant from significant cancers, so that population-based screening for this disease may become cost-efficient. The theme Urological cancers focuses its research efforts on solving these diagnostic and treatment dilemmas for three urological cancers: prostate, kidney, and bladder cancer. It has a strong track record in (molecular) imaging, biomarkers, genetic epidemiology, clinical trials, and evaluation of cost-effectiveness. Integration of these efforts results in concept-changing translational projects that can pave the way to a more individualized urological cancer care for the three cancer types in this theme. With world-renowned (clinical) scientists in all three cancers, and covering the research fields from molecule to man to population, this theme is able to translate new findings from their discovery all the way to (pre)clinical application and implementation into (inter)national guidelines.
 

Objectives

• We aim to identify novel high-penetrance susceptibility genes for bladder cancer.
• We aim to identify germline markers that may predict response to BCG treatment in bladder cancer and TKI treatment in renal cell cancer.
• We aim to quantify the effect of life-style factors on the prognosis of urological cancers.
• We aim to develop and validate new early detection and staging biomarkers in prostate cancer.
• We will evaluate and implement multi-parametric MRI for the detection and assessment of prostate cancer aggressiveness.
• We will validate and implement nano-MRI for the detection and treatment guidance of small lymph node metastases.
• We will evaluate the possibility of monitoring treatment response with hyperpolarized substrates.
• We will develop and validate per-operative imaging tools to improve cancer surgery outcomes.
• We will evaluate the efficacy of novel treatment modalities in RCTs including biomarkers.
• We will evaluate the cost effectiveness of new treatment paradigms in an early development phase.
• We will develop patient-derived models to individualize therapies.