Prostate cancer is the most diagnosed non-skin cancer in the world and the third leading cause of cancer death in Canada. Despite its prevalence, we still lack reliable tools to predict who will develop prostate cancer and identify those at risk of more aggressive forms.
“Preventing deadly prostate cancers through low-risk, cost-effective interventions, while sparing patients from unnecessary diagnostic procedures, overtreatment and the significant side-effects of aggressive therapies, remains a critical unmet need that we will be tackling in this project,” says Dr. Vincent Fradet, professor at Université Laval and leader of a project team supported through a groundbreaking new cancer prevention initiative led by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.
With $1 million from the Terry Fox Research Institute, and $1 million from the Canadian Cancer Society, the team will spend the next five years studying the gut microbiome to identify predictive markers and explore new, non-invasive prevention strategies.
“This approach has the potential to reduce overdiagnosis and focus prevention efforts on those who need them most,” says Dr. Fradet.
Emerging evidence shows that the gut microbiome, which is made up of billions of bacteria in our digestive system, plays an important role in cancer development and progression. And while gut microbes have been linked to treatment response in other cancers, their role in prostate cancer is still largely unexplored.
In a recent landmark study, Dr. Fradet’s team confirmed a two-way relationship between prostate cancer aggressiveness and the gut microbiome, which can be influenced by lifestyle factors such as diet, exercise and medications. In other words, aggressive prostate cancer can affect which bacteria thrive in the gut, and those bacteria, in turn, may contribute to cancer growth.
The team’s early results show that men with different stages of prostate cancer have distinct gut bacterial profiles. They also found that men at risk of prostate cancer, but not yet diagnosed, display differences in gut bacteria depending on whether they eventually develop cancer. These findings suggest that gut bacteria could play a role in both the development and severity of prostate cancer.
In this project, the team aims to find biomarkers, or microbial “flags,” that could help predict who is most at risk and how severe the disease might become.
They will first analyze the gut bacteria of men with and without prostate cancer to understand how these microbes affect cancer development in lab models. Then, they will recruit 450 men at risk of prostate cancer to track their gut bacteria, diet, lifestyle and health over time.
“Our goal is to find gut bacterial signatures that could help predict who will develop prostate cancer and how severe it might become, opening the door to better prevention and more personalized care,” says Dr. Fradet.
“Receiving this funding is a great honour and a strong source of motivation for our team. While we are already proud members of the Terry Fox research community through the Marathon of Hope Cancer Centre Network, this recognition reinforces our shared commitment to prevention-focused, patient-centred research. Being part of the Terry Fox research community inspires us to pursue innovative studies that could directly improve cancer prevention and long-term outcomes.”