Prostate cancer screening

Prostate cancer (PC) is the commonest cancer in men, and although most patients are diagnosed with localised disease and can be successfully treated, ‘almost 10% of patients will present with metastatic disease; these patients have a poor prognosis and a 5-year survival of approximately 30%’ (do Pazo and Webster, 2021).

It is predicted that by 2029 androgen receptor (AR)-directed therapies will capture 58% ($17.4 billion) of the world's seven major markets: United States, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, UK and Japan (do Pazo and Webster, 2021). More recently it has been suggested that ‘the marine environment can be considered to hold potential as a new drug source for PC (Montuori et al, 2023).

UK data for 2020 show that 26.6% of newly diagnosed cancers are ascribed to PC; there is an associated cancer mortality of 13.9%; and ‘[i]n terms of age-standardised rates, the UK currently shows both higher incidence and mortality rates than reported for Europe, with an incidence of 186.1 and an associated mortality of 46.3 per 100 000’ (Montuori et al, 2023).