Detection of hypoxia in oesophagogastric carcinoma with FAZA-PET
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Detection of hypoxia in oesophagogastric carcinoma with FAZA-PET
IRAS ID
147984
Contact name
Russell Petty
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University of Aberdeen
Research summary
The rising incidence and poor clinical outcomes for Oesophagogastric Adenocarcinoma (OGC) indicate the need for improved treatments, and the optimised use of current therapies to avoid ineffective treatments. Areas of low oxygen concentrations (hypoxic) are often seen in the tumours of OGC patients and such hypoxic OGCs have a poor prognosis and respond poorly to chemo- and radio-therapy. Stratifying OGC patients into hypoxic and non-hypoxic sub-groups would optimise therapy selection, by avoiding ineffective treatment in hypoxic OGCs and allowing the development of novel hypoxia targeted therapies for this subset of patients. But current methods for hypoxia detection are invasive, technically challenging and not suitable for routine clinical use. As the only Scottish centre that can manufacture a hypoxia radiotracer for clinical use, we will undertake a study to validate FAZA PET scans as a non-invasive imaging tool for hypoxia in OGC and investigate the relationship between tumour hypoxia and response to chemotherapy. Parallel studies will characterise FAZA uptake in OGC cell lines and identify novel markers and mechanisms for tumour hypoxia. This study will validate FAZA-PET for use in multicentre clinical studies assessing its utility as a predictive biomarker, and as a tool investigating mechanisms of tumour hypoxia to aid novel target identification.
REC name
North of Scotland Research Ethics Committee 1
REC reference
14/NS/0021
Date of REC Opinion
14 Mar 2014
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion