Pre-clinical Biomarker Study: GI/HPB Cancers and Inflammatory Diseases

  • Research type

    Research Study

  • Full title

    Pre-clinical biomarker analyses for Gastrointestinal and Hepato-pancreatobiliary disease: cancers and inflammatory disorders

  • IRAS ID

    313393

  • Contact name

    Abhik Mukherjee

  • Contact email

    Abhik.Mukherjee1@nottingham.ac.uk

  • Sponsor organisation

    The University of Nottingham

  • Duration of Study in the UK

    3 years, 0 months, 1 days

  • Research summary

    Gastrointestinal (GI) and hepato-pancreatobiliary (HPB) diseases form a major proportion of the health workload at UK and global hospitals. These include both inflammatory and malignant conditions with associated morbidity and mortality. Biomarkers can serve as screening agents for early cancer detection or pre-cancerous conditions as well as being used to investigate the success of surgery to eradicate the tumour or relapse of disease. Therefore, biomarkers are increasingly important to aid with screening, diagnosis, prognosis and predictions to therapy. As well as cancer, biomarkers play an important role within inflammatory diseases and the findings of a valid biomarker that could differentiate causes of disease would be extremely beneficial in evaluating and treating patients more effectively. Hence, research into biomarkers for both cancer and inflammatory diseases is paramount to improve patient diagnosis and outcome.
    This project’s aims will be twofold; 1. To investigate biomarkers within cancer and 2. To investigate biomarkers within inflammatory diseases.
    In the cancer research section, researchers will investigate a range of biomarkers within GI and HPB tumours and their metastases to facilitate diagnosis, prognosis, preventative measures and predictions to therapy. In the inflammatory disease section, researchers will investigate biomarker quality and expressions within GI and HPB inflammatory diseases that may be infective, metabolic, immunological, allergic or drug induced.
    Patients who have had a procedure to remove tissue from the GI or HPB tract are eligible for this study, as long as there is surplus tissue available after diagnosis has been made. Surplus tissue samples will be obtained by The University of Nottingham and researchers will run testing and analysis with the aim of creating a set of biomarkers which can be used and adopted by the NHS in the future.

  • REC name

    East Midlands - Leicester Central Research Ethics Committee

  • REC reference

    23/EM/0079

  • Date of REC Opinion

    2 May 2023

  • REC opinion

    Further Information Favourable Opinion