Children who are diagnosed with cancer could benefit from better diagnosis and treatment in the future thanks to a new research project involving clinicians and scientists at The University of Nottingham.
Experts at the University are part of the Children's Cancer and Leukaemia Group which has just secured £2.5 million pounds from Cancer Research UK and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council. They will use the money over the next five years to develop and test new ways of scanning childhood tumours in depth to give doctors a more detailed diagnosis. It will also give them a better indication of how to treat the tumour and whether it will respond to new drugs.
The grant is part of a nationwide investment of £50m to establish four large cancer imaging centres and five cancer imaging research programmes. The cancer imaging initiative will help the development and introduction of the latest imaging technologies to help advances in basic and clinical cancer research.
Cancer is the most common cause of death from disease in children with most cases involving solid tumours. Around 1,500 children are diagnosed every year in the UK. At present conventional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) is the usual technique for scanning of patients but it provides limited, mainly anatomical, information. This research project will look at how more accurate ways of analysing tumours, using Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy (MRS) and Diffusion/Perfusion MRI of tumour tissue, can be better and more widely used by doctors treating children with cancer. Diffusion MRI measures the molecular mobility of water in tissue, while perfusion MRI measures the rate at which blood is delivered to tissue. It gives a much clearer picture of the nature and composition of the tumour in a non-invasive way. Treatment can then be more accurately tailored.