The findings of research on a new prognostic method allowing high-risk stage two colorectal cancer patients to be identified more accurately, have been published by Cypriot Ines Panicou Nearchou, a PhD candidate at St. Andrews.
Ines P. Nearchou is a PhD candidate at the School of Medicine of the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, and is part of the research team led by Dr Peter Caie.
Nearchou, analysed data from 114 patients with stage two colorectal cancer to develop the new prognostic method. This method was then validated in two independent cohorts (56 patients from Edinburgh and 62 patients from Japan).
The new method takes into consideration how the immune system interacts with aggressive tumour cells in patients with colorectal cancer. Currently, the TNM staging system is used in the prognosis of colorectal cancer which provides information on the local spread and size of the tumour (T), whether it has spread to the lymph nodes (N) or has spread to distant organs (M).
TNM staging has been the clinical gold-standard for cancer prognosis and clinical decision-making for many decades.
However, approximately 20 per cent of patients with TNM stage two colorectal cancer experience recurrence of the disease with fatal consequences.
The new system of prognosis developed in St Andrews is believed to be more accurate than current prognostic staging systems specifically for these stage two patients.
The research is titled «Automated Analysis of Lymphocytic Infiltration, Tumor Budding, and Their Spatial Relationship Improves Prognostic Accuracy in Colorectal Cancer» and was recently published in in Cancer Immunology Research, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research, and is available online.
(Cyprus News Agency)
