Tissue Stresses of Cancer

• Research type

  Research Study

• Full title

  Tissue Stresses of Cancer: A Phase I/II, multi-centre, feasibility study to image the tissue stiffness/stresses to predict outcome in breast cancer.

• IRAS ID

  204546

• Contact name

  Anand Purushotham

• Contact email

  arnie.purushotham@kcl.ac.uk

• Sponsor organisation

  King's College London

• Duration of Study in the UK

  3 years, 5 months, 31 days

• Research summary

  Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) is a type of imaging used to delineate breast cancers to determine the type of surgery needed. However, more commonly it is used as an imaging marker to assess whether chemotherapy has its desired effect of shrinking the tumour. Unfortunately, the MRI can only assess the changes in the tumour after several months of chemotherapy

  This specific project is looking at a novel MRI method called Magnetic Resonance Force (MRF). MRF has been developed to measure how stiff the tissue around the tumour in the breast by measuring the Interstitial Fluid Pressure (IFP).

  The aim of this research is to test this new imaging technique in three cohorts of patients; two of which are suffering from breast cancer.
  1. Healthy Volunteers
  2. Patient undergoing surgery as first line of their treatment for their breast cancer
  3. Patients undergoing chemotherapy as first line of their treatment for their breast cancers

  Healthy Volunteers will be recruited in order to establish MRF hardware imaging acquisition protocols for the next phase.

  In patients undergoing surgery as first line of treatment for their breast cancer,if proven useful, these scan would enable doctors to outline the tumour in the breast more accurately, therefore assisting the breast surgeon with the surgery and potentially eliminating the need of sentinel lymph node biopsy.

  In patients undergoing chemotherapy as first line of treatment for their breast cancer, this imaging method these scans would enable doctors to identify those women in whom chemotherapy was not working at an early stage. This would prevent unnecessary side effects and allow a rapid change to other treatments in that particular patient. MRF scans may also help test the usefulness of new therapies in the future. This would speed up development of new and better treatments for women with breast cancer.

• REC name

  London - Bromley Research Ethics Committee

• REC reference

  16/LO/1303

• Date of REC Opinion

  4 Aug 2016

• REC opinion

  Favourable Opinion