PROGRess

• Research type

  Research Study

• Full title

  Identifying Prognostic and Predictive Biomekers in Oesophagogastric Cancer: GSTT/Royal Marsden Translation research collaboration

• IRAS ID

  174810

• Contact name

  David Cunningham

• Contact email

  david.cunningham@rmh.nhs.uk

• Sponsor organisation

  The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust

• Duration of Study in the UK

  2 years, 0 months, 1 days

• Research summary

  Oesophagogastric cancer is the second most common cancer worldwide and the second most common cause of cancer death globally; over 15,000 are diagnosed cases annually in the United Kingdom. Most patients are diagnosed with advanced incurable disease and standard cytotoxic chemotherapy results in a median survival of less than two years. Therefore there is an urgent requirement for both research into the molecular mechanisms underlying oesophagogastric cancer and improved treatment options for patients with this disease.
  For patients with oesophagogastric cancer the only potential curative treatment is surgery, and when chemotherapy is given in conjunction with surgery this increases the proportion of patients who are cured. However we cannot predict in advance who will respond to chemotherapy which means that some patients receive chemotherapy without any benefit. We plan to evaluate the genetic changes in the tumours of patients who received chemotherapy prior to surgery for oesophagogastric cancer and assess if any of these changes predict for a response to chemotherapy or long term survival. In order to do this we plan to collect the tissue samples of patients who underwent surgery at the Royal Marsden and at GSTT over a 10 year period and process these in order to remove the genetic material. The results our study will be the first step in helping to identify markers which predict response to chemotherapy in oesophagogastric cancer. At a later stage it might be possible to select patients for treatment based on these markers, which could significantly impact on future therapeutic options for patients with oesophagogastric cancer.

• REC name

  East of England - Cambridge Central Research Ethics Committee

• REC reference

  15/EE/0228

• Date of REC Opinion

  1 Jun 2015

• REC opinion

  Favourable Opinion