Metabolic profiling of multimodal therapy in colorectal cancer
Research type
Research Study
Full title
MetabOlomics-based patient StrAtification for guiding multI-modality therapy in Colorectal cancer (MOSAIC Study)
IRAS ID
180835
Contact name
Ara Darzi
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Joint Research Compliance Office Imperial College London
Duration of Study in the UK
5 years, 0 months, 1 days
Research summary
Colorectal cancer (CRC) is the 3rd most common cause of cancer-related mortality world-wide. Surgery is the mainstay of treatment for patients with CRC, though increasingly patients are offered chemo- and/or radiotherapy as part of their treatment. For example, it is now routine practice to offer patients with locally advanced rectal cancer chemoradiotherapy (CRT) prior to surgery. The aim of this pre-operative CRT is to shrink down the tumour in order to increase the likelihood of complete tumour removal at time of surgery. In addition, after surgery patients with cancers along any part of the colorectal tract (colon and rectum included) may be offered chemotherapy (adjuvant chemotherapy, aCT) in an attempt to prevent the cancer from subsequently recurring. This decision is based on findings reported by the pathologist, when evaluating the cancer tissue that has been removed at surgery. It is widely acknowledged that current methods for determining the likely response to CRT and for determining the need for aCT require improvement. With current approaches, a proportion of patients are either over-treated or under-treated, and the process of patient stratification could be enhanced using emerging molecular profiling methods. 'Metabonomics' broadly refers to an advancing class of analytical techniques that can offer new insights into cancer biology with which to guide CRT and aCT more precisely. In this multi-centre study we propose to profile CRC tissue samples and biological fluid samples from patients with CRC using metabonomics based techniques. The primary objective of this study is to correlate metabolite expression patterns with patient outcomes to determine whether these approaches can be used to guide therapeutic decision making.
REC name
East Midlands - Leicester South Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
15/EM/0385
Date of REC Opinion
14 Aug 2015
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion