Objectives

Objectives of the PRIMA Project

In this project a multidisciplinary effort is proposed to combat the most lethal aspect of prostate cancer, i.e. hormone therapy unresponsive, bone metastatic lesions. There is currently no effective therapy for locally advanced- and metastatic prostate cancer.

A great number of therapeutic strategies are in pre-clinical and/or phase I clinical testing, attacking a variety of targets. So far most targeted approaches have proven to be unsuccessful. The consortium's explanation is that the targets are too narrowly defined, aiming at a limited fraction of cancer cells. Moreover, most targets are poorly validated.

In this integrated approach to combat prostate cancer we will pursue various levels at which we attack the malignant process and validate these at a phenotypic and functional level.

We will be selecting new compounds using tailor made high-throughput screening assays, likely to result in the identification of non obvious lead compounds and targets that can be patented.

By integrating a variety of state of the art approaches, we aim at identifying and validating at least 5 molecular targets and lead compounds that can be tested pre-clinically in animal models for bone metastatic prostate cancer.