Prostate cancer is the most common cancer in males in the UK, and it accounts for 14% of all cancer deaths in males (2017 – 2019). While treatment for prostate cancer has improved over time, and 10-year survival has more than tripled in the last 50 years in the UK, prostate cancer remains one of the most challenging topics in public health. Detecting and treating prostate cancer has rightly been in the spotlight recently, and we wanted to unpack why it remains such a challenge and highlight our current position on the matter.

It’s a cancer that affects around 55,300 men every year in the UK as well as trans women and non-binary people with a prostate. But current technology and tests still don’t provide us with effective ways to diagnose the disease early. The issues surrounding prostate cancer are incredibly complex and in some cases can leave more questions than answers. Science and innovation continue to try to improve how we diagnose and treat prostate cancer, but we still need to better understand how to diagnose it accurately at an early stage, who is at the greatest risk of dying from it, and the best way to treat it – all of which relies on research.

In this article we set out why we believe there are currently no easy solutions to prostate cancer early diagnosis, and what we’re doing at Cancer Research UK to change that. For more detail on each section, you can read our prostate cancer technical briefing.