Start date: 2017
Award: £85,000
Status: Complete
What issue did this study address?
Rectal cancer affects 11,000 people per year in the UK. Currently we cannot predict which tumours will respond best to which therapy. There are two main types of polyps that can develop into rectal cancer. Previous research has shown that one type (TSA) leads to more aggressive cancers that are not sensitive to radiotherapy, but may be sensitive to new highly-specific types of chemotherapy. However, by the time the cancer has developed, standards tests cannot determine which polyp type it came from. If we had this information each patient could receive the most appropriate treatment, and only patients who were likely to benefit from radiation would be exposed to it.
Click the video to hear from the study lead, Ms Helen Jones, about why tailoring treatment is important for patients with rectal cancer:
What were the aims and results of this study?
The research team examined different early rectal cancer samples from almost 200 patients. They explored different methods to show what polyp type a tumour developed from, including genetic analysis and the ratios of different cells within the tumours. The team then investigated how patterns in these features were linked with the patient’s responses to treatment and how aggressive the tumours were. They found that tumours with low expression of three genes associated with the immune system (LCN2, NOS2 and MS41A) or with low ratios of certain structural cells were more likely to come back quickly after treatment.
The team published three papers and went on to receive further funding for a PhD from Bowel Research UK, continuing the work mapping tumour characteristics to better tailor treatments for patients.
Read the papers:
Stromal composition predicts recurrence of early rectal cancer after local excision
A graph based neural network approach to immune profiling of multiplexed tissue samples
Read about the PhD:
Identification of spatial biomarkers in colorectal cancer
The research team
This application was led by Ms Helen Jones, a Colorectal Surgeon who performs research at the University of Oxford.