Research into new personalized cancer therapies could ‘transform’ the way the disease is treated
Scientists are embarking on a large-scale clinical trial of new personalized cancer therapies, allowing doctors to see in real time how well treatments are working.
The £9 million partnership between the Francis Crick Institute, five NHS trusts, charities and life science companies will spend four years investigating the effectiveness of new immunotherapy treatments and exploring new ways to detect cancer.
The scheme is one of several new research projects given the green light by the Department of Science, Innovation and Technology as part of a £118 million package that will create five new hubs across the UK to develop new health technologies, including cheaper scanners, AI cancer diagnoses and testing new medicines faster through microdosing.
The Manifesto project, led by the Crick Institute, will examine tumors and blood samples from 3,000 patients who have suffered from cancer in an attempt to identify which biomarkers – such as genes, proteins or molecules – could indicate whether someone has an undetected cancer or that the disease could return.
This could make the new wave of immunotherapy cancer treatments more effective. Immunotherapy is seen as a promising form of cancer treatment because it stimulates a patient’s immune system to kill tumors, instead of the “cut, burn, poison” approaches of surgery, radiotherapy and chemotherapy.
Prof Samra Turajlic, clinical group leader at the Crick Institute and consultant medical oncologist at the Royal Marsden Hospital, has been treating melanoma, a skin cancer, for almost two decades.
“When I started, people were dying from advanced melanoma, usually within six months,” she said. Now more than half of people with advanced melanoma who receive immunotherapy survive at least ten years.
The problem is, Turajlic said: “We don’t know who will benefit from it and who will only have side effects.” And so far, only immunotherapies have been discovered that work against certain types of cancer. The Manifesto project will focus on four aspects: melanoma, kidney cancer, bladder cancer and triple negative breast cancer.
There has been an explosion of immunotherapy treatments around the world, but studies are often done on such a small scale that it can be difficult for doctors to know which ones will be effective for particular patients. Biomarkers offer a possible solution.
“What we want to use the biomarkers for is to say whether the treatment is going to work or not,” Turajlic said. “We believe that no single biomarker will really give us the answer, because there is enormous complexity in the interaction between cancer and the immune system.
“So we are going to take a very large number of measurements in patients: tumor samples, blood from patients, from the microbiome, and combine them in a test to understand which has the most predictive power. That’s not something that’s been done on a large scale before.”
They will also recruit an additional 3,000 patients through partnerships with the Royal Marsden and Barts Cancer Institute in London, the Christie in Manchester, NHS Lothian in Edinburgh and Cambridge University Hospitals. Other partners include the Cancer Research UK Biomarker Center in Manchester and IMU Biosciences.
Other programs at five hubs set up by UK Research and Innovation include wearable imaging tools to help surgeons identify cancer and remove tumors, and a new NHS-wide digital pathology data network that will pool data for research teams to access.
“Cancer is a devastating disease that has affected every family in Britain, including my own,” said Peter Kyle, science and technology secretary.
These “great innovations… could change the way we treat this terrible disease and give hope to those affected by it,” he added.
“They could free up capacity in our NHS, relieving the pressure that we can all see very clearly. They could put British companies at the forefront of lucrative emerging industries.
“They have the potential to grow the economy – using our healthcare system and research sector as an engine for growth – and in turn unlock the funding we need to do even more to support our innovators and investing in our public services.”
Wes Streeting, Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, said: “As a cancer survivor I know how important early cancer diagnosis and the latest treatments are. This investment will not only save lives but also secure Britain’s status as a powerhouse for life sciences and medical technology.”