Tissue Collection Framework To Improve Outcomes In Solid Tumours

Background: Cancer therapies have significantly improved over the last decades, allowing cancer specialists to keep cancer under control for longer than ever before. However, metastatic cancer still develops in a large number of patients and drug resistance occurs in the majority of them after an initial period of response and leads to cancer progression and death. Aims: To date, the mechanisms which allow cancer cells to spread through the body to form metastases and to become resistant even to the most powerful treatments are poorly understood. Our aim is to collect cancer specimens and normal tissue specimens such as blood from patients with solid tumours and to analyse these samples with some of the latest molecular profiling technologies in the research laboratory. This comprehensive analysis should reveal what molecular defects fuel the growth of cancer cells adn what allows them to spread through the body and then develop resistance to cancer therapies. Such insights could subsequently lead to the development of better more improved treatments which prevent drug resistance, to novel molecular tests which can also predict which treatment is most likely to be effective and tolerable in individual patients. Methods: To achieve this, we aim to collect multiple samples from consenting patients starting from the diagnosis of a tumour to the time drug resistance develops more. Importantly, this study will collect tissues from interventional procedures which are performed as part of routine patient management of patients seen at Barts Health NHS trust. We will then apply molecular tests such as proteomics and DNA sequencing to these samples. Tissues which are left over after these tests have been applied will be stored in a licensed tissue bank to allow future research with novel technologies.