Prostate cancer is the most common cancer in men in the UK - more than 64,000 are diagnosed each year, and about 12,000 die from the disease.

A £60m trial is looking at the best way to introduce targeted prostate cancer screening by combining rapid MRI scans with treatments that cause lower harm, such as focal therapy.

All men diagnosed with prostate cancer as part of the"Transform" screening study will be offered focal therapy, if appropriate, to treat their disease.

One of the barriers to a national prostate screening programme has been the concern that it will lead to more harm than good because of the side effects of treatment.

This focal therapy trial, published in the journal European Urology, is another key piece of the jigsaw, which could help lead to a screening programme in years to come.

Dr Alastair Lamb, Clinical Reader, Barts Cancer Institute, St Bartholomew's Hospital, said: "It's an exciting potential treatment.

"We need randomised trials. We need better understanding of localised prostate cancer, how it arises, how it grows and how it spreads.

"We eagerly await the results of the PART Trial, the first and only large randomised controlled trial comparing focal versus radical therapy in prostate cancer that needs treatment – until then focal therapy remains a very promising experimental treatment."