Assessing Circulating Tumour Cells as biomarkers for colorectal cancer
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Assessing Circulating Tumour Cells as biomarkers for colorectal cancer
IRAS ID
191426
Contact name
Susan Clark
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Synexa Life Sciences
Duration of Study in the UK
5 years, 0 months, 1 days
Research summary
Circulating Tumour Cells (CTCs) are rare circulating cells that are shed from the cancer, from both primary and metastatic sites. There is approximately one CTC out of 1e6 blood cells and therefore its enrichment necessitates specialized technology. Early CTC enrichment platforms use epithelial markers to isolate CTCs, such as is the case with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved CellSearch by Veridex. However, it is becoming increasingly clear that not all CTCs are epithelial in nature and other CTCs subgroups, such as those undergoing Epithelial-to-Mesynchymal Transition (EMT), Cancer-Stem-Cell-Like CTCs and microemboli, are excluded from these platforms. Technology capable of enriching CTCs by differentiating their physical properties from white blood cells, such as size, deformability, contractility or density, are capable of overcoming these deficiencies. \nColorectal cancer (CRC) is the third most common cancer and the fourth leading cause of cancer-related deaths worldwide. As with many solid cancers, CTCs can be detected in CRCs and the FDA has approved CTCs isolated by CellSearch to be used as prognostic markers. However, the sensitivity of these assays are low, and the cut-off threshold is 3 CTCs/7.5ml of blood for colorectal cancer patients to differentiate between high and low survival rates (Cohen, 2008). Parsortix offers an alternative enrichment technology based on CTC size to differentiate them from blood cells, thereby including all CTC subsets described to date. Using this technology, there are three different questions we would like to address regarding CTCs in CRC:\n•\tCorrelation between CTC enumeration and epithelial vs mesenchymal markers with disease stage and outcome?\n•\tDo CTCs from patients with recurrent cancer have a different gene expression profile to those from patients newly diagnosed with CRC? \n•\tHow common are CTCs in premalignant familial adenomatous polyposis (FAP) patients and can they predict length of time to cancer development?\n
REC name
London - Chelsea Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
15/LO/2207
Date of REC Opinion
29 Dec 2015
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion