Professor Robin Jones
Royal Marsden Hospital
Awarded: £149,928
What are leiomyosarcomas?
Leiomyosarcomas (LMS) are one of the more common subtypes of soft tissue sarcomas. But sadly, standard drugs don’t significantly improve outcomes for many people. This project aims to explore a particular group of LMS with especially poor outcomes. These arise in the abdomen, including the uterus and the retroperitoneum. It also includes LMS that are too big to surgically remove or have spread to other organs such as the liver and lungs.
Why is drug resistance such a problem?
People can be naturally resistant, or become resistant to drugs used to treat their sarcoma over a period of time. This can mean they don’t respond to treatment very well. Drug resistance is the biggest challenge to tackle when treating these patients, and develop treatments that people don’t become resistant to. To help us do that, it important to understand the biology of why some tumours respond to treatment and others do not.
How will this project tackle this challenge?
The team will create tumour ‘avatars’ in a laboratory, which mimic how a cancer behaves in the body. Pieces of a tumour will be taken from patients who consent to this study during their treatment. The sample is then placed on gelatin sponge on a solution that provides nutrients to the cells. The researchers can then perform tests with different types of treatment to evaluate drug resistance and response by the amount of tumour cell death and change in cell growth. Once they have identified these areas of interest, they will measure and compare the genes in areas of drug resistance and response.
What this means for people affected by sarcoma
If successful, this project will answer some key questions about sarcoma. It will provide us with a better understanding of how sarcomas respond to treatment, how drug resistance occurs, and new combinations of treatments. In the long run, Professor Jones hopes that this work can help design future clinical trials, develop new treatment options, and markers that show a treatment is working.
Failure to respond to therapy due to drug resistance remains the biggest unresolved challenge in the clinical management of these patients. In order to advance knowledge to develop more treatments, it is important to understand the biology of why some tumours respond to treatment and others do not.
