In Europe and the US there are close to 20 million people living with cancer today, a figure that is increasing.

According to Cancer Statistics 2007 (American Cancer Society), there were expected to be more cases of prostate cancer in men in the US in 2007 (25% of all cancers in men) than for any other cancers. The numbers of patients suffering from cancers of the lung/bronchus and colon/rectum in the US in 2008 were forecast to be 15% and 10% of all cancers in men, respectively.

Deaths from prostate cancer were expected to account for 10% of all male deaths from cancer in the US in 2008, the second largest cause of male cancer death after cancers of the lung/bronchus (31%). A similar pattern for prostate cancer is being seen in other developed countries and global deaths from prostate cancer in 2007 are likely to have exceeded 250,000 with new cases in the year estimated at almost 800,000 globally. One in six of all men will develop prostate cancer during their lifetimes.

The prognosis for patients diagnosed with prostate cancer critically depends on its developmental stage at the time of diagnosis. As a result of national screening programmes, 58% of all prostate cancers diagnosed in the USA in 1997 were discovered at an early stage (i.e. localised within the prostatic capsule). The 5-year relative survival rate for patients diagnosed with prostate cancer at this stage is almost 100%.

In Europe, where there is no standardised early screening, 25–30% of prostate cancers are diagnosed at the advanced stage and overall 5-year survival rates are between 50% and 60%. Survival rates for patients diagnosed with a prostate cancer that has breached the prostatic capsule are poor and patients with metastatic disease have the lowest predicted survival rates of all. On average, 46% of patients with metastatic disease die 22 months after diagnosis, and approximately 70% of all patients diagnosed with metastatic disease die within 5 years. Whilst these figures clearly emphasise the need for early screening, they also confirm that current treatments are inadequate and show significant side-effects.

This important unmet need has driven Pro-Cure’s own research programme, which the Company believes will produce the next generation of therapies for the treatment of prostate cancer, whilst also avoiding many debilitating adverse side-effects which are associated with current therapies.

In 2006, prostate drug sales were $3.0 billion globally.Pro-Cure believes that novel, more effective, therapies based on its technology could capture a sizeable share of this growing market as well as reducing the cost of management of this major disease (e.g. surgery).