Project Details
Description
Patients with locally advanced rectal cancer are treated with
neoadjuvant therapy prior to surgical resection. 20% of those patients
show a complete response after neoadjuvant therapy and could enter
a watch-and-wait policy, where surgery, which is often associated
with considerable morbidity, is omitted. However, current imaging
technologies are unable to accurately stratify patients. There is thus a
strong need for the careful selection of patients eligible for a watchand-wait strategy. Furthermore, in patients who do need to undergo
surgery, resection of residual tumour is challenging because of the
difficulty to distinct vital tumour lesions from treatment-induced
fibrotic tissue. Incomplete tumour resections consequently lead to
increased recurrence rates and decreased survival rates. Within
INDiCCaTe, I aim to achieve better clinical decision-making for
(colo)rectal cancer patients through implementation of advanced
imaging strategies leading to a more clinical- and cost-effective
deployment of the treatment options. Hereto, I will develop a single,
innovative, easy-to-use and affordable tumour-specific imaging agent
exploitable for both nuclear and fluorescent imaging and preclinically
validate it. With implementation at different moments in the treatment
plan, patients eligible for omitting surgery will be better selected, and
in case of surgical/endoscopic resection, the surgeon will be able to
guarantee a more complete resection of the tumour
neoadjuvant therapy prior to surgical resection. 20% of those patients
show a complete response after neoadjuvant therapy and could enter
a watch-and-wait policy, where surgery, which is often associated
with considerable morbidity, is omitted. However, current imaging
technologies are unable to accurately stratify patients. There is thus a
strong need for the careful selection of patients eligible for a watchand-wait strategy. Furthermore, in patients who do need to undergo
surgery, resection of residual tumour is challenging because of the
difficulty to distinct vital tumour lesions from treatment-induced
fibrotic tissue. Incomplete tumour resections consequently lead to
increased recurrence rates and decreased survival rates. Within
INDiCCaTe, I aim to achieve better clinical decision-making for
(colo)rectal cancer patients through implementation of advanced
imaging strategies leading to a more clinical- and cost-effective
deployment of the treatment options. Hereto, I will develop a single,
innovative, easy-to-use and affordable tumour-specific imaging agent
exploitable for both nuclear and fluorescent imaging and preclinically
validate it. With implementation at different moments in the treatment
plan, patients eligible for omitting surgery will be better selected, and
in case of surgical/endoscopic resection, the surgeon will be able to
guarantee a more complete resection of the tumour
Acronym | FWOSB135 |
---|---|
Status | Active |
Effective start/end date | 1/11/22 → 31/10/26 |
Keywords
- Personalized Medicine
- Nanobody-tracers
- Rectal cancer
Flemish discipline codes in use since 2023
- Biopharmaceutics
- Radiopharmacy
- Gastro-enterology
- Nuclear imaging
- Image-guided interventions
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