Tissue collection protocol RE-THINK CANCER V2
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Tissue collection protocol for the study of re-wiring of signal transduction and herding of clonal evolution to improve patient outlook in cancer (RE-THINK CANCER)
IRAS ID
253051
Contact name
Udai Banerji
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
The Institute of Cancer Research
Duration of Study in the UK
9 years, 11 months, 31 days
Research summary
Treatment for advanced cancers often consists of administering anticancer drugs. Apart from a few exceptions, cancer at this stage is not curable and the cancer cells within the tumours become resistance to anticancer drugs. This project studies two aspect of anticancer drug resistance.
The first aspect is due to re-wiring of signal transduction. Signal transduction is a method cancer cells use to send information from the outside of the cancer cells to the inside of the cell. Certain anticancer drugs block this flow of information; however cells find ways of re-routing this information within the cancer cells and become resistant as they have found 'escape' routes of sending information. Understanding and predicting these escape routes will help researchers design combination treatments to stop or delay cancer cells to become resistant to anticancer drugs.
The second part of the project involves herding of clonal evolution. When a tumour (lump made of cancer cells) is treated with anticancer drugs, some of the cells undergo changes in their building blocks or genes and evolve into cancer cells that are resistant. The resistant cancer cells then divide and the next generations of cancer cells are also resistant and this process is called clonal evolution of resistant cancer cells. Studying and understanding how cancer cells evolve can allow researchers to make cancer cells grow into a state that can be killed by use of other known anticancer drugs. Making cancer cells grow into a specific type that can be treated with existing anticancer drugs is called clonal herding. This aspect of the research will help us decide the best order to go give different anticancer drugs to a patient.
This protocol allows collection of cancer tissue to conduct preclinical experiments.
REC name
London - Surrey Borders Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
20/LO/0004
Date of REC Opinion
28 Jan 2020
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion