Patients with advanced rectal cancer often receive radiotherapy before surgery. However, despite this being standard practice, this treatment only results in complete disappearance (complete response) prior to surgery in 15% of patients. Currently, there are no reliable biomarkers (a biological molecule found in blood, other body fluids, or tissues that is a sign of a normal or abnormal process, or of a condition or disease) to predict which colorectal patients will benefit from radiotherapy, meaning that many patients are unnecessarily exposed to significant side effects.
Launched in 2015, the S:CORT consortium, led by Professor Tim Maughan at the University of Oxford and driven by leading clinical and scientific expertise from the University of Aberdeen, the University of Birmingham, Universität Berne, University College London, the University of Leeds and Queen’s University Belfast, set out to identify possible predictive biomarkers, with the goal of improving and tailoring the treatment of individual rectal cancer patients.
The team has recently published three studies involving 826 patients, using advanced molecular and machine learning techniques to analyse pre-treatment biopsy samples. Patients were recruited from two distinct cohorts: the first supplied by the University of Aberdeen, and the second from the Aristotle trial, which is led by Professor David Sebag-Montefiore from the University of Leeds, funded by Cancer Research UK and coordinated by the University College London Cancer Trials Centre.
Read the full story on the Oxford Cancer website.