What Factors Affect Breast Cancer Neoadjuvant Chemotherapy Efficacy?

Summary

Breast cancer is the most prevalent cancer affecting women. To treat locally advanced breast cancers, neoadjuvant chemotherapy (NACT) is often carried out before surgery to reduce the tumour size to allow breast conservation surgery. However, treatment response for individual patients varies, where the tumour may not respond to treatment and the quality of patient care is compromised if the NACT treatment plan is not optimised. Therefore, the assessment of NACT efficacy is beneficial for the early identification of these patients and appropriate management of treatment.

Breast tumours have unique features compared to healthy tissue, including abnormal tissue structure and biochemical composition. With NACT there are specific changes to such tumour features indicating tumour treatment response.

The purpose of this study is to establish how the changes to breast tumour features following NACT treatment are seen in non-invasive imaging. This study will look at scans of breast tumours using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Changes to tissue structure will be measured by advanced diffusion MRI techniques and changes to tumour related biochemical substances will be measured by advanced magnetic resonance spectroscopy techniques. The investigators aim to assess if these techniques can provide information on the tumour treatment response following subsequent rounds of NACT treatment.

In this longitudinal study, 25 patients undergoing NACT will be recruited for four repeated MRI investigations over the course of NACT treatment. Magnetic resonance (MR) measurements of tissue microstructure and biochemical composition will be compared against histological measurements and radiological assessments of treatment response.

The study will recruit patients undergoing treatment at the NHS Grampian. This research is funded by Friends of ANCHOR, Tenovus Scotland Grampian and the NHS Grampian Endowment Research Fund.

Conditions

• Breast Neoplasm Malignant Breast Tissue

Interventions

OTHER

Magnetic Resonance Imaging

Patients will undergo 4 MRI sessions during NACT treatment. The first scan will take place at treatment baseline before their first cycle of NACT treatment. The second scan will take place following the first treatment cycle prior to the second treatment cycle. Likewise, the third and last scan will take place after the third treatment cycle and sixth (final) treatment cycle prior to surgery. MRI scan sessions will be composed of research scans including diffusion and lipid profiling MR imaging methods and MR spectroscopy (MRS) methods.

OTHER

Histopathological Analysis

Study specific analysis will be performed on the core biopsy and tissue removed in surgery following the completion of NACT treatment. Standard routine histological analysis will be performed, as well as study specific analysis for immunostaining, grading and slide scan imaging for measurement of cellularity markers.

OTHER

Health Questionnaire

Health and demographic information will be collected.

Sponsors & Collaborators

• NHS Grampian

  collaborator OTHER_GOV

• University of Aberdeen

  lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

• Jiabao He, PhD · University of Aberdeen

• Nicholas Senn, MPhys · University of Aberdeen

Study Design

Allocation

NA

Purpose

BASIC_SCIENCE

Masking

NONE

Model

SINGLE_GROUP

Eligibility

Min Age

18 Years

Sex

FEMALE

Healthy Volunteers

No

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2018-05-02

Primary Completion

2019-06-30

Completion

2019-06-30

Countries

• United Kingdom

Study Locations