Evolution of abdomino-pelvic cancers under immune selection
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Evolution of abdomino-pelvic cancers under immune selection
IRAS ID
260310
Contact name
Sheah Lin Lee
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
R&D department, University Hospital Southampton
Duration of Study in the UK
10 years, 0 months, 0 days
Research summary
The understanding of cancer and its characteristics has advanced tremendously in the last decade. As a result, it is increasingly recognised that amongst different cancers, there are similar characteristics or immune responses which are shared. These common characteristics mean that cancers that originate from different parts of the body may be treated using similar therapeutic approaches. Identification of these common characteristics in abdomino-pelvic (AP) cancers (cancer that occur to any organs in the abdomen and pelvis) have the potential to accelerate translation of treatments.
Our own immune cells can shape the progress of cancers by killing cancer cells. Currently, it is not clear how and why some cancers continue to progress despite this in-built defence mechanism. The field of immunotherapy, which uses immune cells to cure cancer, has made encouraging advances thus far. However, some AP cancers continue to be unresponsive to immunotherapy.
In this study, we aim to address:
1) Improve understanding of genetic, molecular and immunological features associated with the evolution of AP cancers. This includes primary, metastatic and recurrent cancers.
2) Correlate these findings to extensive database of clinical data including site of cancers, blood tests, recurrence and survival rate to identify biomarkers stratify patients to various treatments.
3) Using experimental and computational techniques to explore novel immunotherapeutic options.
4) Identification of potentially important prognostic and predictive biomarkers
There are 3 parts to this study:
i) To collect fresh tumour and adjacent normal tissues, and blood from patients with AP cancers. Tissue are collected at surgical resection or biopsies. Blood are collected at multiple time points during the peri-operative period (max four times per year).
ii) Patients with new or recurrent cancer to consent for use of archival tissues (precancerous lesion or previous cancer).
iii) Collection of one-off blood samples from 50 healthy volunteers to use as control.
REC name
East of England - Essex Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
21/EE/0110
Date of REC Opinion
27 May 2021
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion