Fast Field Cycling MRI and microbiota in Rectal Cancer
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Analysing if chemoradiotherapy treatment in rectal cancer can be predicted by Fast Field Cycling imaging and Microbiota sampling. The Microbrect-FFC study.
IRAS ID
294533
Contact name
George Ramsay
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University of Aberdeen
Duration of Study in the UK
3 years, 0 months, 1 days
Research summary
If rectal cancers are identified early, an operation is performed to remove the tumour and the rest of the rectum. Cancers that are found later are larger and can be pressing on other organs. Immediate surgery in this setting risks leaving some of the cancer behind. These are usually treated with chemotherapy and radiotherapy to shrink the cancer before an operation is performed. However, up to one fifth patients who have the chemoradiotherapy respond very well to this treatment and no cancer is left at the time of the operation. It may be that these patients do not require any operation whatsoever. However, other patients have very little response to the same treatment. At present, predicting who will respond well to these treatments is not possible before the start of the therapy. If we were able to do so, we would be able to tailor the treatment for each individual patient rather than treating everyone in the same manner.
Our laboratory successfully created the first whole-body Fast Field Cycling (FFC) imager. FFC imaging is a type of MRI scan that can visualise tissues in a unique way and detect key interactions within tissues. We have previously shown that other types of cancer (breast cancer and sarcoma) can be separated into different groups using FFC scans. This project will investigate if FFC can assess different types of rectal cancer and whether these link with the response to chemoradiotherapy. We will also explore whether the response to treatment is associated with the bacteria in the bowel and in the body. Thus, we will undertake FFC scans of rectal cancer patients before and after chemoradiotherapy and compare this to the response to these treatments at the point of the operation as well as the bacteria in faeces and saliva.REC name
North of Scotland Research Ethics Committee 1
REC reference
22/NS/0035
Date of REC Opinion
3 Apr 2022
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion