Early detection of ovarian, pancreatic and colorectal cancers

• Research type

  Research Study

• Full title

  EARLY DETECTION OF OVARIAN, PANCREATIC AND COLORECTAL CANCERS USING NOVEL BIOMARKER MODELLING APPROACHES

• IRAS ID

  264382

• Contact name

  John Timms

• Contact email

  john.timms@ucl.ac.uk

• Sponsor organisation

  University College London

• Duration of Study in the UK

  2 years, 11 months, 31 days

• Research summary

  Cancer is one of leading causes of mortality worldwide with I in 6 men dying from the disease in 2018 and 1 in every 11 women. With the numbers of new cancer cases set to rise in the coming decades due to an aging and growing world population, it is imperative that efforts to prevent cancer or to detect it early continue apace to reduce the global cancer burden and associated costs.
  Our current study is focussed on three cancers – ovarian, pancreatic and colorectal that collectively are a considerable source of morbidity and mortality. Early screening programmes are either lacking for these cancers because of an absence of suitable biomarkers for detection, or their uptake is limited because of the screening methods employed. Our aim is to continue our discovery work for novel blood-borne biomarkers for these cancers, develop multi-markers models and to validate these in independent sample sets through academic collaborations and/ or with commercial partners. The source material for our work are serial serum samples from the United Kingdom Collaborative Trial of Ovarian Cancer Screening Longitudinal Women’s Cohort (UKLWC), some of which predate disease onset. Using a nested case-control design we will analyse these samples using mass spectrometric and multiplex antibody profiling techniques which are well established in our laboratory and also commercial assays. Our investigations will highlight protein biomarkers for early detection of ovarian, pancreatic and colorectal cancers as well as plausibly informing about the underlying biology of cancer progression. The methodological approaches developed within this programme may be extended for investigating other cancers
  

• REC name

  North East - Newcastle & North Tyneside 2 Research Ethics Committee

• REC reference

  20/NE/0256

• Date of REC Opinion

  29 Oct 2020

• REC opinion

  Favourable Opinion