ReIMAGINE: a prostate cancer research consortium with added value through its patient and public involvement and engagement

Abstract

Plain English Summary One in eight men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer (PCa). Most will not die of it, but our ability to identify those men whose cancer poses the greatest threat to life has, thus far, been poor. Some men are diagnosed with small cancers which will never cause them a problem, some will have treatment which is unnecessary, others will have their cancers missed, and others will be misclassified as either having low risk cancer and will therefore miss out on the appropriate treatment, or told their cancer is high risk and have unnecessary treatment. Nowhere else in modern medicine are these errors of over-diagnosis, over-treatment, missed-diagnoses, and poor risk-stratification more common. The ReIMAGINE Consortium has been developed to undertake discoveries that will correct these four key errors in the PCa diagnostic pathway. We will investigate how to best identify which men have, or will develop, aggressive prostate cancer using imaging combined with advanced biomarker analyses of blood and urine (i.e., OMICs technologies such as whole genome sequencing, targeted sequencing (e.g.: = , methylation). We will achieve this by building on established partnerships between patients, advocacy organisations, clinicians, imaging experts, molecular biologists, methodologists, and a broad range of industrial partners. The Patient and Public Involvement (PPI) sub-committee is an integral part of the study workflow, contributing to study design and recruitment, results analysis, and dissemination. The committee, led by a funded PPI co-ordinator and a patient chair, have given invaluable insight into the study modifications due to COVID-19 restrictions.

Keywords

• Patient and public involvement
• Patient and public engagement
• Cancer
• Prostate cancer
• Study design