Prof Peter Johnson, the NHS national clinical director for cancer, said: “We’ll be contacting over half a million men over the next few months who have or who have had prostate cancer, and I’d urge anyone who receives an invite to Prostate Progress to sign up.
“Joining Prostate Progress today will make a tremendous difference to the lives of men who are diagnosed with prostate cancer in the future.”
Experts said data on prostate cancer were fragmented, scattered across different NHS systems, with too little account taken of patients’ own experiences.
Bringing that information together will allow researchers to follow a man’s journey from before diagnosis through treatment and beyond, revealing patterns that have previously been impossible to detect.
Scientists will compare men whose cancers became aggressive with those whose disease remained slow growing to identify the combinations of risk factors most strongly linked to dangerous disease.
They will examine whether factors such as age, ethnicity, family history, inherited genetic variants, symptoms and changes in PSA levels can predict which cancers are most likely to become life-threatening.
Researchers also hope to identify missed opportunities for earlier diagnosis, including repeated GP appointments, steadily rising PSA levels or delays before MRI scans or biopsies.
The findings could help inform future screening strategies and improve treatment decisions, while giving doctors a far better understanding of the long-term impact of side effects.