ORIGINS Study
Research type
Research Study
Full title
ORganoId GeneratIoN Study for cancers of the head and neck
IRAS ID
292105
Contact name
Ben O'leary
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
The Royal Masden NHS Foundation Trust
Duration of Study in the UK
5 years, 0 months, 1 days
Research summary
People who develop cancer of the head or neck can often be cured if they are suitable for surgery or radiotherapy. However, a proportion of these cancers return, at which point the available treatment options are often not very effective. Our understanding of the biology of cancers of the head and neck is limited, and we don’t understand why some cancers are cured by surgery or radiotherapy and some are not. A better understanding of the biology of cancers that develop in the head and neck could help develop new treatments, or improvements to current treatments, and this might increase the number of patients who can be cured of their disease.
One way to improve the understanding we have of the biology is to look in detail at cancer samples taken from patients. The problem with this is that often these samples are small, and the tumour tissue sample itself already dead once removed from where it was growing, which can limit the analyses that are possible. A potential solution for this is to take cancer tissue from patients and try to directly grow the cells in the laboratory. Keeping the cancer cells alive in the laboratory can be difficult but has been shown to be possible in a number of different types of cancer, including cancers of the head and neck. This kind of model is sometimes known as an ‘organoid’. If successfully established, it means more tests can be done to find out how the cancer is working.
This study is looking at collecting samples of a person’s cancer to see if we can develop these models from patients being treated for cancers of the head and neck. We will ask people who are having surgery for cancers of the head and neck whether we can take samples from their tumour to try and achieve this. Some additional blood tests will be taken alongside the usual blood tests before and after surgery, without an additional blood draw. A collection of saliva will also be requested at these times and we will ask people whether they are happy for us to collect any previous tissue samples, or any that are subsequently collected when they are being followed up, to allow comparison with the samples collected as part of this study.
The main goal of this study is to see if organoids can be established in our laboratories. If these models are successfully established, we will compare them to the original tumour to check they are a good match biologically. After this we can use them to understand how the cancer works and try out new treatments.REC name
North East - Newcastle & North Tyneside 1 Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
21/NE/0096
Date of REC Opinion
21 May 2021
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion