Heavy water in cancer patients

• Research type

  Research Study

• Full title

  Profiling of immune cells in cancer patients using heavy water

• IRAS ID

  266342

• Contact name

  Hester Franks

• Contact email

  hester.franks@nottingham.ac.uk

• Sponsor organisation

  University of Nottingham

• Duration of Study in the UK

  5 years, 0 months, 1 days

• Research summary

  Background: Many cancer treatments fail in clinical trials. There is an urgent need for better
  understanding of how anti-cancer treatments work in individual patients. Usually when we
  take a tumour sample, we are only able to analyse what the cancer looks like at that moment
  in time. There is a large degree of variation between individual tumours, meaning that it can
  be hard to know what effect an anti-cancer therapy has had. Deuterium oxide/heavy water is
  a safe-to-consume stable isotope tracer which is incorporated into protein and DNA.
  Measurement of deuterium incorporation can give dynamic readouts of protein and DNA synthesis since heavy water dosing started. Initiation of heavy water dosing at the same time as an anti-cancer therapy would thus allow determination of what has changed since the anti-cancer therapy was initiated. This would tell us more clearly whether the protein expression seen was in response to treatment or not, and also allow measurement of how many new immune cells were released/created during treatment.

  Aims: To develop a technique using heavy water to enable exploration of the way immune
  cells and other analytes in the blood and tumour of patients change in response to anti-cancer treatments.

  Methods: This pilot study will develop and validate the technique in cancer patients about to undergo surgery. Patients will drink heavy water over a period of up to 6 weeks, with blood samples taken at regular intervals. Immune cells will be isolated from the blood and analysed using mass spectrometry. We will obtain part of the tumour from cancer patients undergoing surgery and carry out immune cell isolations and analysis in the same way.

  We will use this pilot study to ensure we are obtaining meaningful data from our analysis before proceeding to a further study with an anti-cancer therapy intervention.

• REC name

  East Midlands - Nottingham 2 Research Ethics Committee

• REC reference

  20/EM/0024

• Date of REC Opinion

  4 Feb 2020

• REC opinion

  Favourable Opinion