Precision Medicine for Liver Tumours With Quantitative Magnetic Resonance Imaging and Whole Genome Sequencing
This will be a prospective, observational, cohort study to determine the impact of integrated diagnostics using quantitative magnetic resonance imaging, whole genome sequencing and digital pathology on intended patient management for liver cancer patients referred for liver resection. Participants with primary or secondary liver cancer will be recruited from Hampshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust in Basingstoke or Oxford University Hospitals NHSFoundation Trust in Oxford. The incidence of treatable liver tumours is on the rise globally, driven by obesity, viral hepatitis and metastases from colorectal cancers. Survival rates can be improved with optimised allocation of treatment options including surgical resection, radiofrequency ablation, embolisation, chemotherapy and targeted molecular therapies (including immunotherapy). The key motivation of this study is to help patients access the most suitable treatment combinations, based on integrating clinical, radiological and genomic data. A similar integrated approach, integrating radiology and pathology, has been shown to improve outcomes in breast cancer care. Detailed pathologic analysis of the surgical specimen from breast carcinoma biopsy provides valuable feedback to the radiologist, establishes the completeness of surgical intervention, and generates predictive information for therapeutic decisions. Whole genome sequencing (WGS) has discovered cancer driver mutations and the complex molecular profile of liver cancer. In many metastatic solid tumours, WGS has been used to identify a significant patient population (31%) who present with a biomarker that predicts sensitivity to a drug and lacked any known resistance biomarkers for the same drug. Identifying which patients possess druggable mutations will allow clinicians to make the optimal treatment decisions. The next challenge is integrating WGS into scalable clinical practice
Start: February 2021