Prostate Cancer
Causes, prevention, and how to best treat it
Cancer has now become the most common cause of death. While not the biggest killer of men, the most common potentially lethal cancer to afflict males is cancer of the prostate, accounting for over 20% of all cancers in this group. In fact, 1 in 7 men will develop prostate cancer some time in their lifetime. The presentation will deal with prevalence of prostate cancer, possible genetic and other links as causes of this cancer, what you can do to protect yourself from this disease, how it is diagnosed (PSA and other diagnostic measures), how it is initially treated, and what are some of the new treatments and diagnostic tests being developed here in Vancouver to deal with advanced disease. The audience will be encouraged to ask questions during and after the presentation.
Professor Paul Rennie is one of the co-founders (in 1998) and Director of Laboratory Research at the Vancouver Prostate Centre and also a Professor in the Department of Urologic Sciences, UBC. The Vancouver Prostate Centre is one of the world's largest research institutes focused exclusively on urological cancers. He was formerly a Senior Scientist and Research Director at the BC Cancer Agency. He is a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Health Science (FCAHS).
Paul Rennie's laboratory has had a long history of studying androgen hormone regulation of prostate cancer and has contributed much of the experimental groundwork for the development of widely used, cost-efficient treatments for advanced prostate cancer and for providing the mechanistic basis for many treatment protocols. Recently, UBC licensed one of his patents to a large pharmaceutical company in the richest intellectual property deal in the university's history. He is currently an inventor on 51 UBC patent applications covering 8 different prostate cancer related inventions. His overall goal remains to find new treatments to extend the lives of men with advanced prostate cancer.
Please RSVP by end of day November 5th, 2017 to info@arpico.ca or preferably, EventBrite.
November 07, 2017 at 7:00pm
Hillcrest Community Centre - Room 328 - (4575 Clancy Loranger Way, Vancouver, BC)
Click to View Photos
Event Follow-up
On November 7, 2017 ARPICO organized its first event at the HillCrest Community Centre. Trying out a new venue was not the only question mark ahead of the event, since one's never sure how the logistics of a new location are going to work out. The other somewhat uncertain factor, at least in my mind, was the topic of prostate cancer, which I think I was entitled to fear, may not be so interesting to female attendees.
The venue overall worked out ok, if not perfectly, while I am pleased to report that the topic did not seem to influence the registration much. In fact, participants were treated to an extremely interesting overview of the status quo of research on prostate cancer by Professor Paul Rennie, who founded and is director of laboratory research at the Vancouver Prostate Centre and also a Professor in the Department of Urologic Sciences at UBC. He is one of the world luminaries, and leader of one of possibly the most advanced groups, in the field of prostate cancer research.The ARPICO team did a great job of setting up a room new to us and get it ready on time for when people started showing up for the event. Overall the process of checking off registrants went very smoothly and perhaps with only a few minutes' delay I stepped up to interrupt the pleasant chatter that had been getting livelier among participants to introduce the speaker. People quieted down to listen... presumably to me, but instead we all started listening to a group of violins being played by a regular Tuesday night class in a room neighbouring ours. Apparently, I was the only one, who up to that point had yet to realize that we'd have to contend with an unwanted soundtrack that evening. All we could do at that point was to carry on with our program and I am glad our outstanding speaker did not seem very fazed by the "musical backdrop" to his talk.
Other than that minor disturbance, the audience, especially the male fraction, enjoyed a rather sobering message on the progress and successes of prostate cancer research, which suggests overall that this is one of the forms of cancer that, while not defeated, can become in ever more cases "simply" a chronic disease that one has to contend with until some other cause brings about one's life unavoidable end. And, once again, prevention by means of regular checks with our family doctor are about the best we can do in advance to catch this potential issue closer to a resolvable stage.
Nicola Fameli,
President, ARPICO
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