Movember, celebrated globally throughout the month of November, was established back in 2003 by a few friends over a beer in a pub in Melbourne, Australia. Since then, this public awareness movement has gathered tremendous momentum worldwide. These collective efforts aim at reversing the burden of this disease which is the second most common cancer in men, with more than 1.3 million registered cases each year.
Throughout this month countless men are busy growing and grooming their moustaches, encouraging and engaging their friends, family and colleagues to donate to their efforts. Men and women are also getting involved by moving or hosting a Mo-ment to rally for men to take action to live happier, healthier, longer lives. Funds raised support numerous programs, initiatives, and research projects against prostate cancer and testicular cancer, as well as efforts aimed at improving mental health and preventing suicide in men.
Just one of these efforts is the IRONMAN Registry which is an international, population-based registry of 5000 men with advanced prostate cancer across ten countries, 500 of whom will be from Spain. It seeks to advance insights into the clinical outcomes associated with the management of this disease as well as better understand its biological and clinical diversity.
Nationally, this project implemented by the Movember Foundation, is co-funded by one of VHIO’s patrons and institutional supporters, the FERO Foundation. Counting on the expertise of investigators at VHIO and the Spanish National Cancer Research Centre (CNIO) who coordinate this program, along with a network of global data centers and their participating sites, project partners provide de-identified patient clinical data (including blood samples), and patient reported outcome measures to the Global Data Coordination Centre. Clinical data, blood samples (DNA, serum, circulating tumor DNA), and patient reported outcome measures (PROMS) are collected at baseline and as the patient receives different treatments along the years.
Commenting for VHIO’s Global Communications Joaquin Mateo, Principal Investigator of our Prostate Cancer Translational Research Group, and IROMAN Registry co-lead investigator for Spain observed, “Representing an important forward step in advancing precision medicine against advanced prostate cancer, this registry will provide researchers and clinicians with precious data to better decipher the molecular makeup of each particular tumor and more accurately match treatment strategies to the specificities of each individual patient toward improving clinical outcomes and quality of life.”
He continued, “As importantly, IRONMAN will also enable us to set up a tumor tissue bank from Spanish patients that will spur our research efforts to come.”
It is thanks to the collaboration of the 11 participating reference cancer research centers across Spain that 152 patients have already been included in the first year of the project, now totaling at 1.600 patients at the global level.
In celebration of Movember and to help raise funds for research against prostate cancer, a group of healthcare professionals and researchers from our Vall d’Hebron Barcelona Hospital Campus, has set up its official VHIO-HUVH Movember Team page #movemberteam, with Nicolas Herranz, an investigator in Joaquin Mateo’s lab, as the captain for this 2020 campaign. For more information and to get involved today please visit: http://bit.ly/MovemberTeamVHIO .
To discover more about the Movember Foundation here in Spain and how you too can make a difference see: https://es.movember.com/.
