(May) Imaging Hypoxia in Head & Neck Cancer - A pilot study
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Imaging Hypoxia to Define Radioresistant Disease in Head & Neck Cancer
IRAS ID
126530
Contact name
Kate Newbold
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust
Research summary
This is a pilot study of a new type of functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) in patients with newly diagnosed head and neck squamous cell carcinomas (HNSCC). It is established that HNSCC tumours have abnormal blood supplies which can lead to tumours receiving insufficient oxygen (known as hypoxia). This tumour hypoxia has been extensively studied and is known to be a major cause of resistance to treatment with both radiotherapy and chemotherapy.
There have been many attempts to use imaging techniques to visualise tumour hypoxia. However, there is currently no established technique that can reliably achieve this in clinical practice, and existing methods have severe limitations, including poor spatial resolution. We plan to test a new method of visualising tumour hypoxia using functional MRI scans by using a method that has shown promise in pre-clinical studies. This MRI method is known as intrinsic susceptibility weighted MRI, and may be able to provide a non-invasive means of reliably visualising tumour hypoxia with good spatial resolution. If validated, this technology could subsequently result in opportunities to offer patients with hypoxic tumours specific hypoxia targeted treatments that could potentially improve treatment outcomes.
This study will recruit a small number of patients with newly diagnosed HNSCC who are due to undergo an examination under anaesthetic (EUA) as part of their routine staging investigations. We will ask patients to undergo two sets of functional MRI scans before proceeding with standard treatment. Our aim is to develop and test the feasibility of this novel MRI technique as a method of visualising tumour hypoxia. If this initial pilot study is successful we plan to perform a further, separate, study to validate the MRI findings by means of tumour biopsies to be performed after functional MRI.
REC name
London - Chelsea Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
13/LO/0628
Date of REC Opinion
5 Jun 2013
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion