Infection and Cancer In Tissue (I.C.IT)

• Research type

  Research Study

• Full title

  Infection and Cancer in Tissue (I.C.IT)

• IRAS ID

  325962

• Contact name

  Graham Taylor

• Contact email

  g.s.taylor@bham.ac.uk

• Sponsor organisation

  University of Birmingham

• Duration of Study in the UK

  5 years, 4 months, 0 days

• Research summary

  The immune system plays an important role in protecting us against infection and cancer and new medicines that use the immune system to treat these illnesses are now in use with many more in clinical development. Equally, the immune system can itself cause health problems by promoting cancer development, causing long-term inflammation or through incorrectly attacking normal body tissues (autoimmunity). Research investigating infection, cancer and immunity in people has until now relied heavily on blood samples, that are easier to collect and analyse than tissue but provide an incomplete picture of disease.
  
  New 'spatial biology' technologies now allow us to study infection, cancer and immunity in tissues in unprecedented detail. This aim of this project is to apply currently available spatial biology approaches to already-collected tissue samples to obtain a much better picture of the biological processes that underpin Epstein-Barr virus-related cancers. We will compare these to samples of other EBV-related diseases and relevant control samples

  We will apply these technologies to already-collected samples, available through two routes.

  1. Biobanks

  2. Imported from overseas, providing the relevant local regulations permit their use in research and transfer to the UK for such research.

  Samples of EBV-related cancer (from an ethically approved study) are initally being provided by the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

  We may choose to send anonymised samples we receive to laboratories collaborating with us that possess specialised skills or technologies beneficial for this project.

  To make full use of the data generated by the above methods it is important to understand the clinical context in which they are taken. Therefore we may request fully anonymised or pseudoanonymised clinical data (as appropriate) from the above tissue providers.

• REC name

  North West - Greater Manchester South Research Ethics Committee

• REC reference

  23/NW/0292

• Date of REC Opinion

  22 Sep 2023

• REC opinion

  Favourable Opinion