Project description
Innovative imaging to detect cancer-prone regions in tissues and organs
Tumours of the gastrointestinal tract account for over 20% of new cancer cases and many are fatal. Prevention and early diagnosis are critical to clinical outcome, but the majority of cases remain asymptomatic until advanced stages, and biomarkers for early detection are not always available. Early cancer stages are accompanied by tissue changes that cannot be easily detected by current scanning technologies. It means that a whole tissue region can be prone to cancer or that a tissue segment larger than the tumour is affected. The EU-funded SENSITIVE project aims to develop imaging methodologies for the detection of tumour-prone regions and early detection or assessment of tumour margins during treatment.
Objective
Cancer is a major cause of death worldwide. Gastrointestinal (GI) tract tumors are among the most common and deadliest
ones. Despite progress in imaging and treatment, the social impact of these diseases is enormous. All parties in the health
sector agree that prevention and/or early diagnosis is the most effective means to deal with cancer. Currently, cancer is
identified most often when symptomatic or large enough to be visualized in body scans or when histological alterations are
already present. What is lacking is an imaging method that could detect tissue changes that facilitate or predict tumor
development at an early stage. These alterations, collectively referred to as “field cancerization” is an exciting field of study
in cancer biology with profound ramifications in clinical practice. Molecular mechanisms underlying field cancerization are
being studied and the advances in molecular biology facilitate these studies. Never in the past however, have these changes
been sensed/measured by an imaging modality at the organ level. We thus propose the development of a multimodal
microscopy platform that will allow sensing of Raman and scattering properties at the organ level, in order to identify
molecular and structural fingerprints of early stage disease in the GI tract. Successful implementation will allow the
development of an endoscope especially designed for this purpose that will be used to detect early stage cancer in humans.
Fields of science
Keywords
Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
RIA - Research and Innovation actionCoordinator
115 27 Athina
Greece