Lewis Antigen genotyping of pancreatic cancer cases in UKCTOCS
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Lewis Antigen genotyping of genomic DNA in pancreatic cancer cases and cancer-free controls using the UKCTOCS biobank
IRAS ID
138310
Contact name
Usha Menon
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
UCL
Duration of Study in the UK
0 years, 11 months, 27 days
Research summary
Carbohydrate antigen sialyl Lewis A (CA19-9) is the most frequently applied serum tumour marker for diagnosis of pancreatic cancer. University College London in collaboration with Abcodia has previously measured CA19.9 levels in serum collected prior to the diagnosis of pancreatic cancer in a subset of volunteers participating in the UK Collaborative Trial of Ovarian Cancer Screening (UKCTOCS) trial and healthy controls. The data showed that in pancreatic cancer cases the CA19.9 level starts to rise around 2 years before clinical diagnosis (O’Brien et al, Clinical Cancer Res, 2014, pii: clincanres.0365.2014) and this shows promise for the monitoring of patients at high risk of pancreatic cancer.
Based on these findings UCL in collaboration with Abcodia is aiming to develop a longitudinal algorithm to analyse the CA19.9 data previously obtained from pancreatic cases and healthy controls. However, approximately 8% of the population have mutations in the Lewis gene (FUT3) which causes CA19.9 not to be produced even in the presence of large tumours. The CA19.9 pancreatic cancer algorithm would not be applicable to this 'Lewis negative' population, therefore the aim of this project is to determine which of the previously analysed pancreatic cancer cases and healthy controls with longitudinal samples in the UKCTOCS population are negative for the Lewis antigen. This can be tested by genotyping the genomic DNA which will be isolated from the already collected serum samples. Cases confirmed as ‘Lewis negative’ would be excluded from use in building the pancreatic cancer screening algorithm, hence allowing improvement of the performance of the algorithm by the removal of these false negatives.
REC name
London - Chelsea Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
14/LO/2285
Date of REC Opinion
16 Dec 2014
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion