Appropriate Dosing to Optimise Personalised cancer Treatments
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Appropriate Dosing to Optimise Personalised cancer Treatments
IRAS ID
264062
Contact name
Charlotte Proby
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University of Dundee
Duration of Study in the UK
0 years, 3 months, 31 days
Research summary
Targeted anti-cancer therapies are increasingly used to treat human cancers. Monitoring of the drug level in the blood ensures adequate drug blood concentrations are reached and lie within the ‘therapeutic window’ required to optimise the anti-cancer benefit and minimise unwanted drug side effects. Blood monitoring can also be important where there might be drug resistance or drug interactions with other concomitant medications.
At present, anti-cancer targeted drug levels are monitored using blood plasma collected by standard venous sampling. However, standard venepuncture has several disadvantages including the requirement for the patient to travel to clinic or to visit their GP and the need for trained personnel to take the blood sample. In real life this means that monitoring of drug levels often does not take place and patients can be on too much or too little drug with failure of the treatment due to lack of benefit or due to significant toxic side effects.
In the laboratory, we have developed and validated a method of measuring drug levels in animals using dried blood spots (DBS). DBS sampling is a safe method of sampling blood that is patient friendly and conveniently can be undertaken by the patient in their own home. With clear instructions and after adequate training, patients will be able to self-collect DBS samples by using a simple lancing device to puncture clean skin at the tip of a finger and collect a blood spot using a DBS filter paper-based card or a sponge kit. We wish to establish if this DBS technique is feasible in real-life practice as this will potentially make an important future contribution to the safe and effective use of personalised anti-cancer treatments. This is especially so where combinations of targeted anti-cancer drugs are being used, as is increasingly the case for many common human cancers.
REC name
East of Scotland Research Ethics Service REC 1
REC reference
19/ES/0130
Date of REC Opinion
28 Oct 2019
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion