Fast Field Cycling MRI and microbiota in Rectal Cancer

• Research type

  Research Study

• Full title

  Analysing if chemoradiotherapy treatment in rectal cancer can be predicted by Fast Field Cycling imaging and Microbiota sampling. The Microbrect-FFC study.

• IRAS ID

  294533

• Contact name

  George Ramsay

• Contact email

  george.ramsay@abdn.ac.uk

• Sponsor organisation

  University of Aberdeen

• Duration of Study in the UK

  3 years, 0 months, 1 days

• Research summary

  If rectal cancers are identified early, an operation is performed to remove the tumour and the rest of the rectum. Cancers that are found later are larger and can be pressing on other organs. Immediate surgery in this setting risks leaving some of the cancer behind. These are usually treated with chemotherapy and radiotherapy to shrink the cancer before an operation is performed. However, up to one fifth patients who have the chemoradiotherapy respond very well to this treatment and no cancer is left at the time of the operation. It may be that these patients do not require any operation whatsoever. However, other patients have very little response to the same treatment. At present, predicting who will respond well to these treatments is not possible before the start of the therapy. If we were able to do so, we would be able to tailor the treatment for each individual patient rather than treating everyone in the same manner.
  
  Our laboratory successfully created the first whole-body Fast Field Cycling (FFC) imager. FFC imaging is a type of MRI scan that can visualise tissues in a unique way and detect key interactions within tissues. We have previously shown that other types of cancer (breast cancer and sarcoma) can be separated into different groups using FFC scans. This project will investigate if FFC can assess different types of rectal cancer and whether these link with the response to chemoradiotherapy. We will also explore whether the response to treatment is associated with the bacteria in the bowel and in the body. Thus, we will undertake FFC scans of rectal cancer patients before and after chemoradiotherapy and compare this to the response to these treatments at the point of the operation as well as the bacteria in faeces and saliva.

  Lay summary of study results:
  Our aim was to undertake a novel scan in the form of a Fast Field Cycling MRI (FFC MRI) scan of patients with advanced rectal cancer. We also sought to undertake microbial samples of patients and assess their response to chemoradiotherapy treatment.

  We completed scans 15 patients of the aim of obtaining 60. Whilst this feels like a lower number than our initial aim, we have obtained sufficient information to prove that the scan can identify cancer, normal and near normal tissue.
  Undertaking this work during COVID was challenging. The microbial work was not possible

  However, that we see tumour, peritumour and normal tissue on analysing the scans of patients with pathology is promising. This had not been undertaken using FCI MRI previously. We have obtained sufficient information from this pilot study to pursue larger grants to further address this question. Furthermore, our group has developed a new prototype of the FFC MRI scanner is more advanced with much better picture quality and thus will lead to more effective clinical research to be undertaken
  

• REC name

  North of Scotland Research Ethics Committee 1

• REC reference

  22/NS/0035

• Date of REC Opinion

  3 Apr 2022

• REC opinion

  Favourable Opinion