The immune system in the development of hepatobiliary tumours
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Understanding how the immune system promotes the development and progression of tumours in patients with hepatobiliary cancer
IRAS ID
222645
Contact name
Shishir Shetty
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University of Birmingham
Duration of Study in the UK
5 years, 0 months, 1 days
Research summary
Hepatobiliary cancers are tumours which affect the liver, bile ducts and and gall bladder and are increasing in incidence in the UK and globally. There are limited curative options for these cancers and the overall prognosis is poor. It is now known that our immune system plays an extremely important role in how cancers develop and progress. For a tumour to develop within the body it needs to evade the immune system which is programmed to kill cancer cells. Understanding how tumours succeed in inhibiting the immune system should help us design new treatments which promote an immune response in order to kill these cancers or help improve the success of other therapies by combined strategies. In addition, studying immune cells within the blood and liver tissue from patients can also help us decide how responsive patients will be certain therapies and help in planning individual treatment plans for patients.
We will study the immune cells in peripheral blood samples from patients over 18 with hepatobiliary cancers and compare this to patients who have chronic liver disease, other types of cancer and normal healthy controls. Immune cells and liver cells will be isolated from tumours and the surrounding liver tissue that is removed after surgery or transplantation in order to carry out experiments which will determine how these immune cells function in the setting of cancer.REC name
London - Central Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
18/LO/0102
Date of REC Opinion
1 Feb 2018
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion