PROCURE Québec Prostate Cancer Biobank

PROCURE Biobank (bilingual video)

Why Establish a Biological Bank?

To date, the known risk factors for prostate cancer include increasing age, ethnic background and a prostate cancer diagnosis in other family members. However, the majority of diagnosed cases have no known risk factors. Other dietary, environmental, genetic and social factors have all been found to play a role in disease progression, but knowledge at present is still very limited. With respect to development, disease spread and death, prostate cancer manifests and progresses in many different ways not well understood and therefore the disease cannot often be discovered at early stage and therefore prevented.

Research is advancing, albeit slowly. At the current pace of discovery within the current research norms and conventions, identification of risk factors and interventions to prevent the disease and its progression are decades away. There are already foundations and government agencies beginning to provide increased research dollars for prostate cancer, which is a positive development. However, beyond this kind of support, there is an urgent need to re-examine the ways in which meaningful research can be translated into practice far more quickly than it has been to-date.

No discoveries can achieve their full impact without the use of human material. Successful discoveries in the lab and in animals over many years often lead to failure once tested on humans. Even if they succeed in humans, without large banks of human material, the process from laboratory discovery to clinical practice can take decades. The availability of a bank can literally shorten the development process from 10 years to only a few months or years. Blood tests for cancer, such as PSA for prostate cancer, CA 125 for ovarian cancer and CEA for colon cancer, have taken more than 10 years after initial discovery to become clinically employed. These slow processes were at least partly due to the lack of comprehensive banks of material for these cancers.

Furthermore, with biotechnology progressing at an extraordinary rate today, the pace of discovery can increase to a degree never previously imagined. Upon the success of the human genome project, the new fields of genomics, proteomics and bioinformatics promise an unprecedented advancement in the knowledge of life processes. However, these advances cannot lead to medical breakthroughs without the significant numbers of the biological material and information needed to apply the biotechnological tools.

PROCURE proposes to enable the collection and storage of standardized high volumes of prostatic tissues, blood, urine, clinical information and socio-demographic data from men undergoing prostate cancer screening and surgery across the province of Quebec and facilitate access to these resources. Informed consent, upholding full confidentiality, will be sought from the thousands of men already undergoing prostate biopsies and radical prostatectomies in Quebec each year. Quebec is an ideal location to conduct this initiative with its diverse ethnic groups and low migration. The low migration will allow for repeated follow-up with individuals. This large collection of biospecimen and information will be used for biochemical and genetic analysis with great statistical power and will facilitate learning about the manifestation and progression of prostate cancer over time. Additional benefits include the acceleration of clinical trials, better prevention, earlier detection and diagnosis, the development of personalized medicine, more efficacious treatment, and follow-up care.

In particular, the French-Canadian (FC) population is an ideal founder population from which to collect for the Biobank:

• Originates from 2,600 founders who arrived from France 12-16 generations ago, between 1608 and 1760
• French immigration essentially ceased after this time
• Higher degree of genetic homogeneity (The current FC population is largest genetically homogeneous localized founder population worldwide)
• Fewer variations for known disease genes

The power of the PROCURE Québec Prostate Cancer Biobank (the “Biobank”) will be realized once the scientific community has the opportunity to access it. Once established, PROCURE will make the Biobank materials and information available to the global scientific community to facilitate the implementation of studies at an accelerated pace. This can realistically be achieved within only a few years of development.