Scientists ‘holy grail’ to stop prostate cancer spreading to bone undetected within reach

At just 45, father of four David Webb was diagnosed with stage 4 prostate cancer; six years later, he’s alive and still fighting.

David Webb is fighting stage four prostate cancer and calls on all men to get regular check ups and be alert for symptoms. Pictured with his children top row Dalton, 24, and Logan, 19, with daughter Sierra, 22, David and his wife Nonie and Baker, 19, on the bottom row.

When Queensland father of four David Webb got the results for his blood test, the results were a shock.

While most men have a reading of one to two on the prostate cancer screening test, called a PSA test, with 10 being an indicator of possible cancer, Mr Webb returned a staggering result of 270.

At just 45, he was diagnosed with advanced metastatic stage 4 prostate cancer, meaning it had already spread.

“I was an over achiever,” the now 51-year-old joked.

Six years later, after rounds of gruelling chemotherapy and hormone treatment, Mr Webb is still fighting. “I am alive today, against the odds, thanks to research and drugs developed in the last decade,” he said.

“But for me to live longer I need the momentum to continue.”

Now Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre researchers are on the cusp of discovering the holy grail of prostate cancer treatment that will help men like Mr Webb by stopping metastatic prostate cancer switching off the body’s natural immune response when it spreads to the bone.

Researcher Katie Owen said she has identified an immune signalling pathway which is suppressed when the cancer spreads from the prostate to the bone and makes the cancer cells invisible, allowing it to grow unchecked.

David Webb was diagnosed with stage 4 prostate cancer when he was just 45 years old, with his wife Nonie.

“One of the things we’ve found is that prostate cancer cells seem to acquire and lose certain features when they move to bone, particularly features that allow them to be detected and killed by good immune cells under normal circumstances,” she said.

“The flow-on effects that this has in an already immune privileged site (anatomical regions that are less subject to immune responses) which includes bone, is to encourage the expansion of bad or pro-tumour immune cells.

“It also encourages bone resident cells that are not found in any other sites in the body to talk to these pro-tumour immune cells, through secreted proteins and physical interactions.

“This exacerbates pro-tumour conditions in bone and unfortunately, the changes that we’re seeing occur in bone metastases also promote therapeutic resistance, particularly against immune-based therapies, including checkpoint inhibitors, which have shown promise in other cancer types.”

Dr Owen said her research, funded by the Prostate Cancer Foundation of Australia and to soon be published, shows that in certain circumstances immune signalling pathways can be switched back on in cancer cells to make the cells visible again to bolster the body’s immune response.

“What we’re hoping our work will do is provide more information and potentially open up new treatment strategies, improve current treatment combinations, and increase the effectiveness of therapies that are already available,” she said.

“Ultimately, we want to see long-term anti-tumour responses to therapies that are currently failing in bone-metastatic patients.”

Mr Webb said news of the promising research gave him reason to hope, stressing that fundraising and research made a real difference. “We always need hope, even though my situation is not so great right now,” he said.

He also urged men to be vigilant about the risk of prostate cancer, go for testing early and often, and continue to support researchers looking for a cure.