Predicting whether a patient will respond to chemo when colorectal cancer has spread to the liver

Predicting whether a patient will respond to chemo when colorectal cancer has spread to the liver.

There are 42,000 new bowel cancer cases in the UK every year. 40% of these cases will develop a secondary malignant growth, commonly a tumour in the liver. In these cases, a first stage treatment is given (neoadjuvant chemotherapy) in order to shrink the tumour prior to the second stage treatment - surgery.

However, 50% of patients are resistant to chemo and currently there is no way of predicting who is resistant and who is not. If we can predict those that will not respond, chemotherapy can be avoided in these patients and surgery can be fast tracked to improve outcome. MP-MRI is a new type of scan that can tell us about the blood supply of tumours. We want to test whether this new scan can be used to identify those patients that will and those that will not respond to the neoadjuvant chemo.

In summary, research will take a cross section of patients with colorectal liver tumours from whom we will take an MP-MRI scan prior to chemo. We will simultaneously determine their
chemo response by analysing NHS standard scans. In comparing the two, we will be able to identify whether data from the MP-MRI scans is associated with chemo response.

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