Every year TUF looks to fund crucial urology research into diseases like prostate cancer. Mr Sooriakumaran will receive £50,000 through The Urology Foundation Research Scholarship Programme to fund his research project ‘Testing radical prostatectomy in men with prostate cancer and oligo metastases to the bone: a randomised controlled feasibility study.’
© NDSThis funding, along with the 2015 Young Investigator Award worth $225,000 which Mr Sooriakumaran received from the Prostate Cancer Foundation, will be used to fund the TRoMbone clinical trial.
TRoMbone will study whether patients can be recruited into a trial that compares current standard care for treating oligo-metastatic prostate cancer (currently androgen deprivation therapy (ADT)) plus radical prostatectomy to standard care alone. TRoMbone is a feasibility study with an embedded Qualitative Recruitment Investigation (QRI), which will optimise recruitment methods for the trial. Should this feasibility trial show that recruitment is possible in this cohort of men, a further funding application will be prepared for a larger study to look at treatment effects. TRoMbone is currently in set-up, with an anticipated start date of 1 October 2016.
Mr Sooriakumaran was presented with the TUF medal at the BAUS (British Association of Urological Surgeons) Annual Meeting, which took place on Wednesday 29 June 2016.
‘I'm honoured to have received this medal,' he said. 'Thanks to the generosity of The Urology Foundation, we can now investigate the role of surgery in men with limited metastatic prostate cancer, which could potentially have huge impact for how we treat these men.’