Cancer trial an ‘absolute gamechanger’
“The first thing I remember thinking was, ‘Oh no, now I’ve to tell my wife and our two boys that I have cancer’.”
John Bradley from Kanturk is one of the men who has benefited from taking part in a new trial aimed at supporting men in their post-cancer recovery. John was diagnosed with stage four prostate cancer in 2022. He was successfully treated with 39 sessions of radiotherapy and was put on a hormone treatment.
Following the treatment, John said that he felt lost. Three months after his treatment was complete, his doctor told him about the LIAM MC trial. “He said it was a new 12-week course, and would I be interested in doing it? I said yes,” said John.
The LIAM Mc (Linking In with Advice and supports for Men with Metastatic Cancer) trial is based in Cork University Hospital (CUH) and is designed and run by Cancer Research @UCC. It saw men receive specialist physiotherapy, nursing, and dietician support weekly, to empower them to maintain physical activity to enhance their quality of life.
This was complemented by holistic care education to ensure their practical and emotional, as well as physical needs were met.
The trial has had a transformative impact on cancer patients and recently received a funding renewal.
“The morning it started we were in the Mardyke gym in UCC. I’d never been in a gym ever in my life before that morning, so it was hard for me for a while,” said John.
“The second hour after the gym we had a talk, and it changed every time – sometimes it was an Irish Cancer Society Daffodil Centre Cancer Nurse, a dietician, a social worker, an oncology psychologist, or staff from the Cork ARC Cancer Support House.
“By week six, the seven of us on the LIAM Mc Trial were all really into it and enjoying it. They tested our muscle mass at the start of the course and at the end of it, and by the end of the course they found that my muscle mass had increased by 40%. It was amazing and it really flipped things for me,” he said.
The two-year LIAM Mc Trial was the result of an initial €300,000 funding commitment awarded to UCC from the Irish Cancer Society. It has not completed enrolment, with analysis of the results ongoing.
The trial recently won the Irish Cancer Society’s Survivorship Project of the Year Award 2026. It has also received additional funding from the Irish Cancer Society with support from Pfizer.
The trial’s team now has dedicated team members with protected time – initially for two years – because of the funding. Their roles will be to further explore the data and answer additional research questions, such as whether muscle mass changed as a result of the trial, and to gather longer-term follow-up data.
Dr Brendan Noonan, Co-Principal Investigator of the LIAM Mc Trial said: “The trial was established to address an important gap in cancer survivorship care for me living with advanced prostate, bladder, and kidney cancers.
“The response from participants has exceeded our expectations. Men have told us that the programme has improved their confidence, physical function, wellbeing, and ability to manage life after treatment,” he said.
After finishing the trial, John said that the trial had been a gamechanger for him. “At the end of the course, my wife said, ‘I’ve got my husband back’. I hadn’t realised that I wasn’t the same person after I was diagnosed with cancer and went through treatment.
“I feel like I’m in a place that I couldn’t imagine being in a couple of years ago, I’m grand now and my mental health is perfect,and I think the LIAM Mc Trial is a big part of that,” he said.