Background

The Institute of Cancer Research (ICR) has played an instrumental role in establishing targeted androgen deprivation therapy (ADT) as a mainstay of prostate cancer treatment. ICR researchers have illuminated the biology of castration resistant prostate cancer, discovered the CYP17-targetingprostate cancer drug abiraterone, and led major trials of this and other ADT methods. ICR scientists have continued to generate new understandings of prostate cancer and pioneer new treatments, for example proving the potential of treatments targeting the DNA Damage Response such as PARP inhibitors.

A surprising recent finding from their prostate cancer programme, in collaboration with the Oncology Institute of Southern Switzerland and others, shows that the pro-inflammatory cytokine interleukin-23 (IL23) – secreted by tumour associated myeloid-derived suppressor cells –drives