PHH3 as a response marker for neo-adjuvant chemotherapy
Research type
Research Study
Full title
The investigation of PHH3 as a marker of response for breast cancer patients receiving neo-adjuvant chemotherapy
IRAS ID
191824
Contact name
Gina Collins
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Royal Cornwall Hospitals NHST
Duration of Study in the UK
1 years, 0 months, 1 days
Research summary
Breast cancer is one of the most common cancers in women worldwide and currently there are a number of different treatment options available. This includes pre- and post- surgery chemotherapy, hormone therapy, biological therapy and radiotherapy as well as a range of surgical interventions.
Once reserved for inoperable tumours, neo-adjuvant (pre-surgery) chemotherapy (NAC) is becoming more commonplace to allow patients to have more conservative surgery i.e. mastectomy reduced to wide local excision and to convert inoperable tumours (due to size/location) to operable tumours.
Currently, there is no appropriate response marker to determine which patients will benefit the most from NAC; some tumours even progress when being treated with NAC. It would be useful to develop a response marker that a clinician can use to classify patients into the most appropriate treatment pathway.
Maintenance of cell proliferation (cell growth) is a fundamental feature of all tumour cells and it has been reported that breast cancers with high proliferation rate tend to respond better to NAC. Phosphohistone H3 (PHH3) is a cell proliferation marker and is expressed by cells specifically undergoing mitosis (cell division); an antibody against PHH3 will be used to label these cells. The number of cells undergoing mitosis can be counted and compared with the patient's response to NAC.
This retrospective study will be carried out on breast cancer patients treated with NAC between January 2012 to June 2015; archive histological tissue will be used and no treatment/clinical decisions will be impacted by this research. The research will be carried out at the Royal Cornwall Hospital only and is anticipated to take 12 months to complete.
REC name
West Midlands - Solihull Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
16/WM/0042
Date of REC Opinion
14 Jan 2016
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion