New ‘suicide gene therapy’ offers prostate cancer hope

US scientists have identified a new gene therapy technique that offers potential strong effectiveness in combating prostate cancer.

The long-term experimental treatment, trialled at Houston Methodist Hospital, is called suicide gene therapy, and works by modifying prostate cancer cells to prompt the patient's body to attack and kill them.

So-called because it causes tumour cells in the body to self-destruct, the technique was delivered alongside chemotherapy or radiotherapy in the current study and yielded positive results, with a more than 94 percent success rate.

In severe cases, the survival rate was recorded at 94 percent, with the success rate being five to 20 percent better compared to currently-used prostate cancer treatment methods.

Lead author Dr Bin Teh, vice-chair of Houston Methodist's Department of Radiation Oncology, said: "This is extremely pleasing to us, considering we had patients enrolled in our protocol after other physicians deemed them incurable. We firmly believe this will be a viable treatment strategy."

Prostate cancer is the most common cancer type in men in the UK, with more than 40,000 new cases diagnosed every year.