Is there greater tumour response as determined by tumour cell density at 6 weeks or 12
Ms Jessica Evans, Surgical Research Fellow
Royal Marsden Hospital, London
Co-researchers: Prof P Quirke, Dr N West, Dr G Brown, Dr Andrew Wotherspoon, Mr Swift,
Project summary
About 15,000 people are diagnosed with rectal cancer every year in the UK. Currently 35-45% of such patients receive radiotherapy before their operation to reduce the chance of local and distant recurrence.
The effects of radiotherapy are time-dependent yet, perhaps surprisingly, the optimum time post-radiotherapy to operate remains unknown.
We will determine whether MRI can accurately and reliably determine response to treatment. If MRI can predict response it may be used to guide further management. This includes identifying patients who have responded so well to treatment that no tumour remains and so they can avoid surgery, with its associated morbidity and mortality.
We have established a multicentre study to examine the timing of surgery, comparing 6-8 and 12-14 weeks. We aim to determine the degree of tumour response to radiotherapy by measuring tumour cell density between the two time groups. Thus we plan to determine if greater tumour response - reducing the probability of local and distant recurrence - occurs when surgery is delayed to 12-14 rather than 6-8 weeks.
This page was last updated on 12-11-2010