GItractRS_SMART_RetroArchive
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Evaluation of the role of Raman spectroscopy in the diagnosis and management of premalignant and malignant disease of the gastrointestinal tract [SMART: Stratified Medicine through Advanced Raman Technologies] Retrospective access to archived tissue
IRAS ID
180047
Contact name
Catherine Kendall
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Gloucestershire Hospital NHS Foundation Trust
Clinicaltrials.gov Identifier
n/a, n/a
Duration of Study in the UK
21 years, 6 months, 26 days
Research summary
Cancer affects one in three people in the UK. Histopathology, the current gold standard for cancer diagnosis, is still mainly a subjective technique. This leads to significant issues when identifying patients in early stage disease who could be treated more conservatively. Agreement between pathologists for early neoplasias can be below 50%. Further, more accurate objective methods of identifying those patients who will progress rapidly to advanced diseases are vital.
Raman spectroscopy (RS) is a non-invasive analytic tool that uses the laser light to identify the molecular composition of different tissues or materials. A significant body of research has been conducted exploring the potential of Raman spectroscopy as adjunct to aid to histopathological diagnosis of cancer. Raman provides disease-specific molecular signals from unlabelled tissues in a reproducible manner. This opens up the possibility of clinical decision-making at early neoplastic stages of disease.
This study will evaluate the performance of a novel Fast Raman imaging system. This offers significant benefits to stratified medicine through improved and earlier detection, increased specificity - improved morbidity, mortality rates, savings from more targeted treatment, savings from faster diagnosis and reduced repeat surgery (in-vivo in theatre analysis).
Archived pathology specimens will be used in this study. Sections will be cut for spectroscopy and routine histopathology review to compare the accuracy of the spectral classification model against accepted gold standard.
In order to evaluate system transferability between hospitals or research laboratories, spectral measurements will carried out at Gloucestershire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and sections will be distributed to University of Exeter and University College London. Each of these sites has comparable Raman spectroscopic system.
REC name
London - Fulham Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
15/LO/1314
Date of REC Opinion
27 Jul 2015
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion