Colorectal cancer immunophenotyping - CRUK Accelerator
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Immunophenotyping in stage specific colorectal cancer is predictive of overall survival.
IRAS ID
236977
Contact name
Manuel Salto-Tellez
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Queen's University Belfast
Duration of Study in the UK
1 years, 5 months, 26 days
Research summary
Colorectal cancer (CRC) is a heterogeneous malignancy, for which treatment has principally been cytotoxic chemotherapy. Our aim is to assess the immune-biomarker landscape in the largest study of its kind, demonstrating the therapeutic potential of immunotherapy in CRC.
The Northern Ireland Biobank approved project NIB13-0069 has interrogated 661 pre-therapeutic colorectal biopsy or surgical resections with primary colon adenocarcinoma (with a single primary colon cancer ICD codding) in tissue microarray (TMA) format for a range of immune and immune checkpoint biomarkers. To date, biomarkers CD3, CD4, CD8, FOXP3, PDL-1, IDO-1 and ICOS have been assessed within our CRC 661 cohort and related to overall survival (OS). Interestingly we have found stage to be an important variable in the impact on OS duration with several of these biomarkers.
We have validated the expression of a variety of the immune and immune checkpoint proteins via digital pathological analysis. We have also extensively validated our immunohistochemistry technique for its sensitivity and specificity of these biomarkers, following strict AQ/QC processes to determine the in situ expression across our cohort.
We feel that it is now essential to confirm the presence of these immune and immune checkpoint proteins in an additional large cohort of differing stage. In addition to the biomarkers assessed, our goal is to profile addition key proteins for their role in the tumour-immune milieu. This would enable confirmation that these biomarkers are involved in stage specific patient OS and may provide novel diagnostic subgroups which could be good candidates for immune therapy in CRC. This would be a significant breakthrough for cancer immunology.REC name
Yorkshire & The Humber - Sheffield Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
17/YH/0415
Date of REC Opinion
24 Nov 2017
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion