This is a single site, double-blinded, prospective, paired cohort study. Participating patients and clinicians involved in treatment or management will be blinded to the CTC results, to avoid influencing standard patient treatment, management, and progression outcomes after RP.
Patients will be recruited (months 1-24) at UCLH, where the UK largest urological surgery centre is located and performs robot-assisted RP on PCa patients referred from several regional hospitals. The clinical team at UCLH will identify eligible patients who will be approached by the clinical research fellow (CRF) employed on the research project or the clinical care team for informed consent using the consent forms specifically designed for this project for blood collection and future research. Non-metastatic disease will be based on the current standard diagnostic imaging methods including CT/MRI and PSMA-PET/bone scan. A pre-surgery PSA test will be performed routinely at UCLH.
2 x 10 ml blood samples will be collected (months 1-27) using the lavender cap EDTA tube according to our established method from each consented patient by the CRF or the clinical care team at UCLH during the pre- and post-RP PSA test blood sampling, and taken to the laboratory at Barts Cancer Institute, John Vane Science Centre, Charterhouse Square either by the CRF, a tissue bank acquisition officer (TBAO)(in the absence of the CRF) or the postdoc (anonymise samples transfer in the absence of CRF and TBAO) under the signed material transfer agreement (MTA), at room temperature. The samples will be transported in designated sample carrier using a taxi service. No public transport is to be used for moving samples between sites.
