LOCATE-IIV
Research type
Research Study
Full title
LOCATE-IIV: Local Oesophageal CAncer Treatment Engineering – intralesional injection validation
IRAS ID
354256
Contact name
Stefan Antonowicz
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Research Governance and Integrity Manager Imperial College London
Duration of Study in the UK
4 years, 11 months, 31 days
Research summary
Patients with oesophageal cancer have unmet needs as drip- and tablet-based drug treatments rarely completely cure the disease. This is reason why less than 20 in every hundred oesophageal cancer patients survive this cancer.
We are developing a new approach to treat these patients, within the multi-centre LOCATE consortium. This has been funded by the Medical Research Council (https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=MR%2FY008448%2F1). Our strategy is to directly inject these tumours with drugs targeting the immune system. This has been successful in other cancers.
Before we can trial this in patients, we need to understand how injections might be distributed in these tumours. This means injecting surgical specimens of oesopahgeal cancer, after they have been removed from the patient. This work is the subject of this application.
We plan to recruit 50 patients. We will collect the tissue removed as a part of their normal care, and immediately transfer them to an imaging facility (at a collaborators facility at UCL) to visualise these injections under controlled conditions. As soon as the experiment is complete we will transfer the tissue back to the Hammersmith Hospital pathology department to complete its histopathological asssessment as a part of standard clinical care.
REC name
East Midlands - Nottingham 2 Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
26/EM/0152
Date of REC Opinion
14 Jul 2026
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion