Value of Analysing Under-utilised Leftover Tissue (VauLT)

Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust

Status: Enrolling

Conditions: Oncology

Treatments: Other: Leftover surgical tissue homogenization

Study type: Observational

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT03832062

CCR 4838

Details and patient eligibility

About

Intratumour heterogeneity is well recognized in multiple cancer types and ultimately leads to therapeutic resistance. It also limits the ability of small samples to represent the whole tumour, having implications for diagnosis, molecular analysis and understanding of the tumour immune microenvironment. By blending- 'homogenizing'- leftover tumour tissue in excess of that required for diagnosistic purposes, one may create a more representative sample for analysis.

Full description

In order to establish the feasibility of homogenization as a potential companion diagnostic tool, our study aims to 1) evaluate how many surgical cases have left over tissue amenable to homogenization and 2) pilot homogenization across multiple tumour types. The molecular profile of the homogenate will be compared to that obtained from the diagnostic specimen using next generation sequencing techniques.

Enrollment: 800 estimated patients

Sex: All

Ages: 18+ years old

Volunteers: No Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

1. Leftover formalin-fixed tissue (ie that would be otherwise discarded by histopathology) from cancer surgery.
2. Tissues for Research consent has been provided.
3. Patient age >18yo.
4. Minimum of 1 gram of residual tumour remaining in leftover surgical tissue
5. Minimum of 1 gram of normal tissue present.

Exclusion criteria

1. Advanced Practitioner in histological dissection deems tumour sample to be inadequate.
2. Leftover surgical tumour tissue greater than 20kg.