CHERNAC

• Research type

  Research Study

• Full title

  CHERNAC: characterising early response to neoadjuvant chemotherapy with quantitative breast MRI

• IRAS ID

  173435

• Contact name

  David Buckley

• Contact email

  d.l.buckley@leeds.ac.uk

• Duration of Study in the UK

  2 years, 7 months, 28 days

• Research summary

  Patients with breast cancer often undergo chemotherapy to decrease the size of their tumours before surgery (neoadjuvant chemotherapy). Blood flow to the tumour will change before the tumour shrinks and we believe that those cancers showing the largest decreases in blood flow are likely to be the best responders to treatment.
  Conversely those cancers that show no decrease in blood flow may not respond at all. Blood flow is normally measured by positron emission tomography (PET), an expensive technique with limited availability that uses ionising radiation. We have developed a new method of measuring blood flow using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). MRI doesn’t use ionising radiation and patients with breast cancer are familiar with the scans. We plan to test our idea by imaging 40 patients undergoing neoadjuvant chemotherapy and to compare our findings with measurements made in tissue samples taken from the tumours. By identifying non-responding tumours very early doctors can make changes to the chemotherapy those patients are receiving and therefore reduce the unnecessary side effects of the ineffective drugs.

• REC name

  Yorkshire & The Humber - Bradford Leeds Research Ethics Committee

• REC reference

  15/YH/0246

• Date of REC Opinion

  28 May 2015

• REC opinion

  Favourable Opinion