The difference you make

In the past 25 years we have raised over £8 million and helped the Royal Surrey County Hospital achieve ‘Centre of Excellence’ status in the treatment of prostate cancer. We support the Royal Surrey County Hospital, St Luke’s Cancer Centre and Frimley Park Hospital in their efforts to detect and treat prostate cancer. We have provided equipment, specialist nursing staff and run an active patient support group.

The Prostate Project also funds the scientists working at the University of Surrey, supporting their work developing innovative immunotherapy treatments and drugs for men with advanced (metastatic) prostate cancer. Recent research has also started into why there are racial disparities in outcomes in prostate cancer (I in 4 black will get prostate cancer, compared to 1 in 8 in other men).

We pride ourselves in being a volunteer-run charity, with very low overheads. So you can donate in confidence, knowing at 94 pence in every £1 donated goes directly to the point of need. However, we recognise it costs money to raise money and we continuously look to make savings wherever we can.

There are too many areas that we have supported over the years to list in detail, but here are a few recent highlights:

1. The Stokes Centre for Urology – 2019

In 2011, the Royal Surrey County Hospital asked us if wecould raise £1.3m towards a new landmark Urology Centre. In 2013 they increased that figure to £2m. Thanks to the incredible support through over 9,000 individual donations, we raised £3million which was matched by a £3million investment from Royal Surrey.

The Stokes Centre, named after Colin Stokes who recently retired as Chair of the Prostate Project, also houses a research laboratory and features a state-of-the-art operating theatre for brachytherapy, which uses tiny radioactive seeds to treat prostate cancer. The unit is the largest in Europe, having treated over 5,000 patients.

The Centre is one of the most significant investments in Urological services in the UK for over a decade, helping to establish the Royal Surrey internationally as a leading prostate cancer centre of excellence, capable of treating more men with early disease than any other unit in the UK. NHS patients experience will be transformed and they will feel like private patients, greeted by a friendly receptionist, coffee and tea making facilities, soft lighting and air con throughout, furniture all different sizes for variety and differing needs.

10 Urological Consultants, 12 Specialist Nurses and 5 consulting rooms with beds for examinations and ultrasound assessments, a treatment room used for minor procedures such as cystoscopies and biopsies,100-120 cystoscopies performed each week.

The Centre is also a showcase for collaboration between the NHS and a local charity, The Prostate Project, enabling a sector-leading Centre to be built delivering world-class facilities and care for patients.

To have created this landmark building in the NHS at a time of austerity is a tremendous achievement and is a wonderful demonstration of how a community can come together with the NHS to deliver a truly world-class result. We will always be grateful to the thousands of generous donors who made this wonderful new Centre a reality. In particular, the support we have received from the Surrey Advertiser, Eagle Radio, Guildford Flames, Surrey Masons, Lisa May Foundation, Rotary clubs, local golf clubs and individual benefactors have helped us to reach the finish line.

Royal Institution for Chartered Surveyors (RICS) Social Impact award in Healthcare 2020

he Stokes Centre for Urology at Royal Surrey NHS Foundation Trust has won the Royal Institution for Chartered Surveyors (RICS) Social Impact award in Healthcare 2020, thanks to a design aimed at improving the dignity and wellbeing of the many hundreds of prostate and bladder cancer patients who are treated there each year.

The RICS award celebrates buildings that have a positive human and social impact and the Stokes Centre does this, offering world-class treatment in attractive surroundings that make patients feel reassured at a difficult time in their lives. As well as offering specialist services for diagnosis, treatment and recovery all under one roof, the Stokes Centre incorporates a calm, relaxed environment, colour schemes inspired by nature, comfort lighting and a welcoming reception area.

“This wonderful new building allows us to deliver the best care to our patients that we all strive to achieve. Now the environment matches the quality of our clinical outcomes. By the minute patients walk through the door of our centre they relax knowing that they will receive the highest quality of care. It is a privilege to work in such a fantastic unit…”

– DONNA HIGGINS, LEAD CLINICAL NURSE SPECIALIST, ROYAL SURREY COUNTY HOSPITAL

Royal Opening

‘World-Firsts’

Since the opening of the Stokes Centre, there have been some major milestones and ‘world-firsts’, demonstrating one of the core reasons behind building the Stokes Centre. The quality of the facilities, that you help to support means that the Royal Surrey can attract leading surgeons and consultants to Guildford.

• First proctectomy daycase patient – March 2022. David Naisby was the first proctectomy daycase patient and in March 2023 the 100th cancer patient went home the same day that he had his prostate surgically removed as part of a drive to aid recovery. The initiative has helped save the RSCH more than £17,000 by avoiding unnecessary hospital stays and freeing up vital beds for other patients.
• 5000^th brachytherapy patient – July 2022 In a UK first, doctors at Royal Surrey have treated their 5,000th prostate cancer patient with brachytherapy – radioactive ‘seeds’ implanted in or near a tumour to treat cancer.
• Self-removal of catheters -August 2022. The Royal Surrey is the first hospital in the UK to offer self-removal of catheters.
• 12 prostatectomies in 1 day- May 2023 . Royal Surrey surgical teams recently carried out an astonishing 12, robotically assisted radical prostatectomies in a single day, breaking the existing world record and significantly reducing the waiting list for surgery. Five surgeons and four theatre teams performed the operations back-to-back, minimising turnaround time and helping treat more patients. and reducing waiting list by more than 25%

2. Vectra Polaris at the University of Surrey – April 2020

• We purchased a £270,000 piece of technology, the Vectra Polaris, to advance cancer research at the University of Surrey. The Vectra Polaris is a new class of Automated Quantitative Pathology Imaging System that can easily detect and measure up to 9 overlapping biomarkers within a single tissue section. This state of the art technology provides in-depth analysis of interactions between immune and cancerous cells that was previously impossible.Th equipment is vital to the development of cancer immunotherapy, a revolutionary new form of treatment which artificially stimulates the immune system to treat cancer and will help transform cancer care in the UK. In addition, the new machine will provide a valuable service to Royal Surrey County Hospital Pathology UnitTo successfully treat cancer, new innovative treatments which are less toxic to the body are needed. Cancer immunotherapy is one way to achieve this. The use of the Vectra technology and the knowledge we gain from it, will enable us to develop effective collaborations with immunotherapy drug developers and attract clinical trials with novel treatments to the University and Royal Surrey.
• In the following year, we funded at a cost of £10,000, two super computers to support the technology. The computers are capable of processing digital pathology images faster.

3. A New £100,000 Diagnostic Imaging at The Stokes Centre for Urology – October 2020

• We purchased a new life saving £100,000 diagnostic imaging device to detect prostate cancer at the Stokes Centre. The ultrasound machine, made by Hitachi, fuses images from an MRI scan with the live ultrasound image, allowing doctors to detect prostate cancer more accurately. There are only four machines of its type currently in use by NHS Trusts across England. This new Hitachi Ultrasound machine was part of the charity’s ‘Fabulous Fit Out’ appeal to buy equipment for The Stokes Centre for Urology.
• Speaking about the new Hitachi Ultrasound machine, Professor Langley, Professor of Urology at the Stokes Centre, explains:“The best way to detect prostate cancer in our patients is by carrying out an MRI to see if there are any suspicious areas which might represent cancer. However we use ultrasound when we take tissue samples (biopsies) from the prostate to verify whether cancer is present but the abnormalities seen on MRI are often invisible on ultrasound. Therefore, it can be difficult to accurately target the area of suspicion within the gland.
• “This new machine will enable us to fuse together the MRI and ultrasound images in real-time. This is invaluable when we are taking the biopsies and enables us to detect prostate cancer much more accurately. It will also reduce the need to unnecessarily biopsy parts of the gland that are very unlikely to contain cancer and is therefore less invasive for patients”.

4. IncuCyte SX5 – a live cell imaging equipment – April 2021

The IncuCyte is a live cell imaging equipment that is specifically designed to fit inside any incubator, with it the research team are able to run experiments from home and access results in real time on personal computers, at home, making the equipment invaluable during lockdown.

The equipment does not require operatives to open up the incubator, meaning that optimal culture conditions are maintained, which is essential to cell culturing.

The £160k device is ideal for long term experiments, or example when testing the effects of cancer-killing viruses on cancer cells or testing novel anti-cancer agents which require continuous monitoring. Samples do not have to be sacrificed to set up a time line in studies of dynamic cellular processes.

Since being installed in the lab this technology is being extensively utilized for testing the effects of anti-cancer agents and virotherapy on tumour growth.

The ease of use, ability to consistently image cells in real-time from any computer, and the ability to collect reproducible, high quality results in half the time that it would have taken otherwise, have quickly secured this technology as an indispensable piece of equipment for our research.

We reached our £160,000 goal to purchase this game-changing equipment, thanks to large donations from one of our Patrons and a patient of Professor Hardev Pandha, we also used funds raised via the online art auction, an initiative organised by Dr Nicola Annels, as well as money raised by the Christmas appeal.

5. Biological Specimen Coordinator, Oncology R&D at the University of Surrey labs

Alongside technology and equipment, we also fund the salaries of vital healthcare and cancer research professionals. Michelle Hammill is one such professional; a Biological Specimen Coordinator, Oncology R&D and she is the bridge between the hospital and the cancer researchers at the University of Surrey.

However, as with every aspect of research, there is a great deal more to it than that. Michelle is a Registered Health Professional and a clinical scientist by training, with over 23 years ‘hands-on’ experience in Pathology Research. And she was also Head of Molecular Genetics at St Thomas’s.

One of Michelle’s primary functions is to identify suitable patients, and approach them for their help with the various research projects the team are working on.

Once Michelle has explained the process of collecting samples, the necessary consents are obtained and Michelle retrieves the samples and delivers them to the research labs for analysis.