Tumour - immune interactions in CNS
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Interrogating tumour - immune interactions within the central nervous system
IRAS ID
329630
Contact name
Ruichong Ma
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University of Oxford / Research Governance, Ethics and Assurance
Clinicaltrials.gov Identifier
000000, 000000
Duration of Study in the UK
7 years, 0 months, 31 days
Research summary
Brain tumours are rare, but deadly diseases. They can either originate from the brain (primary brain tumours) or have spread from other cancers in the body (metastases). Of the primary brain tumours, glioblastoma is the most common and unfortunately, also the most aggressive. Brain metastases are common in many cancer types, including breast, colorectal, lung and melanoma. They are an indication of spread of the disease and often leads to a much poorer outlook for patients.
Recently, the immune system has been leveraged to treat a range of previously untreatable cancers, such as metastatic melanoma, with great success. Unfortunately, these drugs have not been shown to work for patients with brain tumours. The exact reason why is still not fully resolved, but it is thought that the brain itself is an immunologically ‘distinct’ organ, offering up its own unique challenges.
Technology now allows researchers to investigate tumours at a single-cell level. However, to achieve this depth of analysis, tumours must be split into individual cells, and as a result, the specific interactions between cells are lost. Newer technologies, allow researchers to perform single-cell analysis on frozen tumour sections, overcoming this limitation.
In this application, we propose an ambitious study to leverage this new technology to explore the microenvironment within the normal brain and tumour to see why brain tumours are not immunologically active and find ways to overcome this. By comparing to existing datasets from multiple sclerosis patients, we will harness our understanding of how the immune system can drive a neuroinflammatory disease to better understand how the immune system is able to interact with the brain in general. Our aim is to generate a portfolio of disease-relevant and drug-targetable immune cell types to guide researchers on new avenues to combat both brain tumours and inflammatory diseases of the brain.
REC name
Yorkshire & The Humber - Sheffield Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
23/YH/0256
Date of REC Opinion
14 Dec 2023
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion