Immunometric analysis in solid malignancies
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Tissue based immunometric analysis to guide personalised immunotherapy in solid malignancies
IRAS ID
220445
Contact name
Christian Ottensmeier
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University Hospital Southampton NHS Foundation Trust
Duration of Study in the UK
5 years, 0 months, 1 days
Research summary
In recent years, many diseases have been found to be affected by how the immune system works and in particular cancer. There are now new treatments, which target the relevant biological mechanisms; these can be used on their own or together with existing treatments. Promising results have been seen in patients with several different types of malignancies and several drugs are now approved for use in clinic with many more in clinical trials.
So far only a relatively small proportion of patients with cancer benefit from immunotherapy; the risk of significant toxicity is real and to-date unpredictable for each individual. This is because we still do not fully understand how immunotherapy works and how to choose the right treatment for the right person.
The purpose of this project is to improve our knowledge of how the immune system functions in people with malignancies; we would also like to work out what effect any treatments they may receive has on the way their immune system fights cancer.
We plan to do this by collecting tissue and blood samples from patients before and after they receive anti-cancer treatment and conducting in depth comprehensive analysis of the immune response – at the genetic, functional and morphologic levels – and cross-reference with clinical outcome data.
The ultimate aim is to predict which patients are most likely to benefit from particular drugs and least likely to experience side-effects; further more we would use the information gained to guide us choose which new immunotherapy drugs are worth combining with existing treatments to investigate in future larger scale clinical trials or use in personalised medicine approaches.
REC name
Wales REC 5
REC reference
17/WA/0241
Date of REC Opinion
21 Jul 2017
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion