TIMM-RAD
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Investigating the tumour immune response of radiotherapy
IRAS ID
275284
Contact name
Tim Illidge
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
The University of Manchester
Duration of Study in the UK
3 years, 0 months, 1 days
Research summary
Radiotherapy is delivered to around 50% of all cancer patients and is a highly effective treatment in bringing about local control by directly killing cancer cells. In addition to the direct effect on cancer cells, radiotherapy can affect the surrounding immune cells in the tumour environment and this can either stimulate or suppress the patient’s immune system. We are interested in further investigating the local immune system effects of radiotherapy in the tumour environment, and also whether radiotherapy can have distant effects in the body, away from the local radiotherapy site, measured in a blood sample. The data generated will potentially open the door to future new cancer treatment regimes.
We aim to identify tumours with a “hot” inflammatory surrounding environment and those with a “cold” immunosuppressive environment. Ultimately we aim to identify biomarkers (a biomarker is an indicator of disease progression or the effect of treatment) to help us understand which patients are likely to respond well to radiotherapy and which patients may benefit from the addition of immunotherapy to radiotherapy. Immunotherapy is a kind of cancer treatment that helps the immune system fight cancer.
The cancer types we are interested in studying are cervical, rectal, cutaneous lymphoma, nodal Non-Hodgkin lymphoma, and Head & Neck cancer. Patients may be invited to take part in the study if they are having a course of radiotherapy as standard treatment. Patients will provide an additional biopsy sample taken during or post-radiotherapy, and extra blood samples taken before and during/post-radiotherapy. These research samples will enable us to determine the immune cell profile, and whether the immune cell numbers are increased or decreased following radiotherapy.
The study is being funded through Christie Charitable Funds awarded to the Chief Investigator. The recruitment of patients will be at Christie NHS Foundation Trust as the single site.
REC name
North West - Greater Manchester Central Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
20/NW/0362
Date of REC Opinion
18 Sep 2020
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion