Hanna Sjoberg

My research focus is on improving therapeutic options for locally advanced prostate cancer by utilising pre-clinical models for the disease. The currently available therapies include antihormone treatment and radiotherapy, but many patients relapse within five years and those patients who are cured may suffer significant treatment side effects.

There is an unmet need for improved therapeutic strategies and during the course of my work I will combine minimally invasive interventions with radiotherapy to improve outcomes and reduce treatment toxicity and side-effects. Specifically, I use TOOKAD-soluble® vascular-targeted photodynamic therapy, which ablates solid cancers by targeting tumour blood vessels by focally generating reactive oxygen and nitrogen species that are activated when the intravenous photosensitiser is illuminated by near-infrared light. My aim is to investigate if this vascular-targeted photodynamic therapy along with radiotherapy will have synergistic effects when optimally combined.

Following on from this pre-clinical model work, if successful, will hopefully be clinical trials evaluating the clinical relevance of this innovative and previously untested combined treatment. In the longer term this combination treatment may become a recognised alternative treatment in men with prostate cancer.