The aim of this project is to measure the forces exerted by a tumour onto its surroundings and quantify the diagnostic impact of this physical parameter in the domain of oncology for breast cancer, liver cancer, and brain tumours. So far, we have demonstrated in simulations and phantom experiments the feasibility to quantify those forces noninvasively via nonlinear tissue mechanics.
Our initial results from breast cancer patients show that those lesions that exhibit the largest pressure do show lymphovascular space invasion. We are currently running a clinical trial in order to confirm this in a larger cohort. If confirmed, this has major impact on patient pathway. A patient that is currently scheduled for tumour surgery would rather first received neoadjuvant chemotherapy if the presence of lymphovascular space invasion were known prior to surgery. Hence, the measurement of tumour forces could have an immediate impact on patient management, which is the aim of this project.
The liver cancer trial in Paris has started and we have collected initial datasets from patients with hepatocellular carcinoma. Similarly, the brain cancer trial in Basel & Oslo has started as well. Given the promising initial results in breast cancer trials that showed correlation between lymphatic tumour invasion and elevated pressure, we hope to have enough material by the end of this year (2020) in order to aim for a major publication. At the moment we are working on obtaining enough data to draw final conclusions.
Our current hardware solution for MRE has reached a high level of technical and clinical maturity and we are aiming for translation to industry. We achieved a good level of phase stability of the MRE setup which now provides data of the highest quality. We furthermore significantly improved on the reconstruction with remarkable data in the human brain revealing details which had not been visible before. The liver setup has received hardware additions that render the acquisition more patient friendly and we also implemented a single breath hold sequence for comparison with other methods. All new insights equally went into the breast setup in London, which now provides excellent data within 7mins data acquisition time within the normal clinical routine.
On the post-processing side, we gained new insight to greatly improve stability and quality. The basic paper about pressure reconstruction has been successful published in Scientific Reports. We also finished the mechano-transduction experiments with very exciting new insight. Caspase7 is generated due to mechanical shear waves. The manuscript will soon go out for review.
