VODECA substudy
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Volatile Organic Compounds for Detection of Colorectal Cancer (VODECA) - substudy
IRAS ID
324990
Contact name
Christopher Probert
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University of Liverpool
Duration of Study in the UK
0 years, 7 months, 0 days
Research summary
We are studying colorectal cancer. We have collected faecal samples and demographic data from ~800 patients undergoing colonoscopy to study faecal bacteria and their metabolites. Patients gave consent for future studies pending approval. The main study has closed. Here we apply for permission to collect data for 2 substudies:
i. FIT (faecal immunochemical test for blood) data from local labs across 17 sites, if performed before the colonoscopy, to validate the FIT data from our lab. We have measured FIT on all samples in the reference lab in the Royal. However this was undertaken on stored samples that were up to 3 years old. We need to ensure our results are not altered by storage. We will then compare our metabolite data and FIT data as a means of detecting cancer.This should require no more than a download of data from the local labs by the local PIs, against the patient IDs that they should have in their site files.
ii. Patient post codes. Looking at the data so far, we have observed differences in samples donated from the south of UK, compared to those from the north. There are no such differences in vegetarian diet, smoking and BMI data. We are speculating the differences may arise from ‘deprivation’ and wish to use postcodes to assign deprivation indices to each anonymous sample. Bowel cancer is more prevalent in the north. Our data, with postcode data, will investigate this.
This will require local teams to look up the postcode from each recruited patient, from the local electronic patient record.REC name
West of Scotland REC 5
REC reference
25/WS/0108
Date of REC Opinion
8 Jul 2025
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion