Professor of Urology and Honorary Consultant Urologist
Vincent J Gnanapragasam is Professor of Urology in the University of Cambridge and an Honorary Consultant Urologist at Addenbrooke’s Hospital, Cambridge. He graduated from Newcastle University and following basic surgical training, was a recipient of a CRUK PhD studentship and subsequently the first surgeon to be awarded a CRUK Clinician Scientist Fellowship.
Vincent’s academic work has covered the full spectrum of basic science, translational, clinical and epidemiological disciplines in prostate cancer. His laboratory work as group leader has previously led to discoveries into the pivotal role of endogenous signalling regulators (SEF/SPRED) in prostate cancer and mechanistic insights into growth factor signalling in disease progression and treatment resistance. His work is focused on risk-based management of prostate cancer and understanding the key factors needed for personalised management decisions for patients and the value and place of genetic and molecular markers over and above clinical factors.
His clinical work integrates research into practice and is based on the management of early prostate cancer including personalised risk and prognostic stratification and optimal strategies for surveillance. He has developed and implemented novel prognostic prediction models for both group stratified cohorts Cambridge Prognostic Groups and for individualised prediction Predict Prostate for personalised management of prostate cancer. In 2021 the Cambridge Prognostic Groups was officially adopted by the UK National Institute of Clinical Excellence as the recommended risk stratification tool in the national prostate cancer guidelines (NG131). Predict Prostate is also the only decision aid endorsed by the UK NICE National Guidelines on prostate cancer for decision making and has been translated into 5 other languages. He has also pioneered risk stratified pathways for active surveillance (STRATCANS) and setup one of the first dedicated early prostate cancer clinics in the UK.
He has developed and led numerous investigator led multicentre clinical trials including; Predict Prostate RCT, PRIM biomarker study, and the NIHRi4i funded CamPROBE study (based on his invention of a simple device for infection free prostate biopsies). The CamPROBE has been successfully awarded CE and UKCA mark and has now been commercially licensed for dissemination across the NHS offering a low-cost solution for safer diagnostic prostate biopsies.
He is Chief Investigator of the DIAMOND study which hold over 2000 bio-samples, tissue and annotated clinical data for biomarker discovery in urological diseases (to date used in over 70 research studies). In recent years he has developed a new clinical trials programme exploring the concept of therapeutic intervention to slow or abrogate early disease progression in prostate cancer. The first of these (TAPS01) has been published and a follow on national RCT (TAPS02) has now started.
To further interdisciplinary research in prostate cancer he established the Cambridge Prostate Cancer collaborative group with colleagues from urology, oncology, radiology, pathology and basic sciences. This collaborative has so far produced >60 peer reviewed papers with a combined grant income of >£6M. He established the Cambridge Urology Translational Research and Clinical Trials office which has to date recruited>1700 patients to various NIHR and portfolio urology trials. He has also established links with STEM scientists to develop a number of innovations including biosensors for cancer detection, machine learning algorithms for disease prediction and novel statistical modelling methods. He has collaborated with national and international colleagues including from the Universities of Manchester, East Anglia, Stanford, Yale, UCLA, Singapore, Korea, Gothenburg, Melbourne, Oslo and amongst others.
He is a member of the UK ICGC prostate group and on the clinical steering committee of the International Pan Prostate Cancer Collaborative. He is a founder member of the International GAP3 Active Surveillance consortium. To date he has raised over £7M in personal research funding covering basic, translational and clinical trials research, over £5M as co-investigator and published over 200 peer reviewed papers. He is also joint applicant on research collaboratives that have secured over £70M in funding. His work has been cited in prostate cancer guidelines by NICE, the European Association of Urology and Swedish Prostate Cancer Guidelines. He is clinical department lead for urology research and a member of the University MD and MChir committees. He is also Visiting Professor at Anglia Ruskin University (ARU) having developed a collaboration between Cambridge University Hospitals and ARU to establish a Masters in Urology programme for early stage clinicians aspiring to a career in Urology. He holds patents and CE marks (Predict Prostate and CamPROBE). He has also won numerous prizes for research, including the CE Alken prize, Urological Research Society Medal and a RCS England Hunterian Professorship. In the University of Cambridge, he is a recipient of the Vice-Chancellors Award for Research Impact (Established Researcher).
Selected publications as lead/senior author in the last 2 years
1. Light A, Lophatananon A, Keates A, Thankappannair V, Barrett T, Dominguez-Escrig J, Rubio-Briones J, Benheddi T, Olivier J, Villers A, Babureddy K, Abdelmoteleb H, Gnanapragasam VJ. Development and External Validation of the STRATified CANcer Surveillance (STRATCANS) Multivariable Model for Predicting Progression in Men with Newly Diagnosed Prostate Cancer Starting Active Surveillance. J Clin Med. 2022 Dec 27;12(1):216. doi: 10.3390/jcm12010216.
2. Thankapannair V, Keates A, Barrett T and Gnanapragasam VJ. Prospective Implementation and Early Outcomes of a Risk-stratified Prostate Cancer Active Surveillance Follow-up Protocol European Urology Open Science 2023 March, 49, 15-22 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.euros.2022.12.013
3. Gnanapragasam VJ, Greenberg D, Burnet N. Urinary symptoms and prostate cancer-the misconception that may be preventing earlier presentation and better survival outcomes. BMC Med. (2022) Aug 4;20(1):264. doi: 10.1186/s12916-022-02453-7.
4. Lee C, Light A, Saveliev ES, van der Schaar M, Gnanapragasam VJ. Developing machine learning algorithms for dynamic estimation of progression during active surveillance for prostate cancer. NPJ Digit Med. (2022) Aug 6;5(1):110. doi: 10.1038/s41746-022-00659-w.
5. Barrett T, Pacey S, Leonard K, Wulff J, Funingana I, Gnanapragasam V. A Feasibility Study of the Therapeutic Response and Durability of Short-term Androgen-targeted Therapy in Early Prostate Cancer Managed with Surveillance: The Therapeutics in Active Prostate Surveillance (TAPS01) Study, European Urology Open Science 2022 Feb; 38, 17-24: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.euros.2022.01.007.
6. Thurtle D, Jenkins V, Freeman A, Pearson M, Recchia G, Tamer P, Leonard K, Pharoah P, Aning J, Madaan S, Goh C, Hilman S, McCracken S, Ilie C, Lazarowicz H, Gnanapragasam VJ Clinical impact of the Predict Prostate risk communication tool in men newly diagnosed with non-metastatic prostate cancer: a multi-centre randomised controlled trial. European Urology. (2021) Sep 4:S0302-2838(21)01933-3.
7. Lee C, Light A, Alaa A, Thurtle D, van der Schaar M, Gnanapragasam VJ. Application of a novel machine learning framework for predicting non-metastatic prostate cancer-specific mortality in men using the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) database. Lancet Digital Health. (2021) Mar;3(3):e158-e165. doi: 10.1016/S2589-7500(20)30314-9.
8. Gnanapragasam VJ, Leonard K, Sut M, Ilie C, Ord J, Roux J, Hart Prieto MC, Warren A and Tamer P. Multicentre clinical evaluation of the safety and performance of a simple transperineal access system for prostate biopsies of suspected prostate cancer: The CAMbridge PROstate Biopsy DevicE (CamPROBE) study. J Clin Urol. (2020) Sep;13(5):364-370.
9. Wilson ECF, Wreford A, Tamer P, Leonard K, Brechka H, Gnanapragasam VJ. Economic Evaluation of Transperineal versus Transrectal Devices for Local Anaesthetic Prostate Biopsies. Pharmacoecon Open. 2021 Jul 9. doi: 10.1007/s41669-021-00277-4.
10. Liu S, Shen M, Hsu EC, Zhang CA, Garcia-Marques F, Nolley R, Koul K, Rice MA, Aslan M, Pitteri SJ, Massie C, George A, Brooks JD, Gnanapragasam VJ*, Stoyanova T*. Discovery of PTN as a serum-based biomarker of pro-metastatic prostate cancer. Br J Cancer. 2021 Mar;124(5):896-900.
