Ex vivo determined cancer therapy (EVIDENT)
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Ex-vivo multi drug screening of solid tumours to determine personalised therapy efficacy and resistance
IRAS ID
262315
Contact name
Sarah Danson
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS FT
Duration of Study in the UK
6 years, 0 months, 0 days
Research summary
Ex-vivo multi drug screening of solid tumours to determine personalised therapy efficacy and resistance
Over the last two decades advances in cancer biology and drug development have led to a number of novel targeted anti-tumour therapies. These targeted therapies are generally guided by genetic biomarkers, as most cancers develop from specific combinations of genetic alterations accumulated in tumour cells. This has resulted in a shift from systemic chemotherapy to more targeted approaches. These targeted treatments are available for a sub-population of patients with these predictive biomarkers and not all patients respond. Additionally for many patients without known genetic biomarkers there are still no treatment options available other than the systemic chemotherapies, or all treatment options may have been exhausted. Predicting drug response in patients is an area which can be improved.
Ex-vivo drug profiling is a method that can test multi-drug responses on an individual’s “live” biopsy prior to patient treatment, in all cancer types where a biopsy can be accessed. Briefly, a solid tumour biopsy will be taken from patients, this will be subjected to ex vivo drug screening including; all standard care EMA and FDA approved cancer therapies, plus generic, repurposed, and novel therapeutics. The results will predict the most effective treatment regimen for the individual’s tumour, or determine if the tumour is resistant to treatment.
This study aims to test the feasibility of collecting fresh tumour samples from patients then evaluate individual tumour ex vivo response to a large range of therapeutics. All standard care therapeutics the patients could receive as part of their treatment will be included in the drug screen. We will then retrospectively correlate the patients’ response to their standard care treatment to the ex vivo results to provide proof of concept data to deternine the predictive power of ex vivo drug screening.
REC name
South West - Frenchay Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
20/SW/0193
Date of REC Opinion
25 Jan 2021
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion