Augmented Response of Volatile Biomarkers in Assessment of Oesophagogastric Cancer (AROMA 1 / BIORESOURCE)

Overview

Cancer of the stomach and oesophagus is among the world's top five cancers. Survival rates are very poor as the disease presents late and early symptoms are non-specific. The study team has developed a non-invasive test for cancers of the stomach and oesophagus based on the detection of volatile organic compounds in exhaled breath. These compounds are known to be produced by both cancers as well as cancer associated bacteria within the gut. The proposed innovation is to improve the accuracy of this test by investigating whether simple metabolic substrates can increase the production of these volatile organic compounds by both the tumour and its associated bacteria.

AROMA 1: A total of 648 patients will be recruited for development of an augmented breath test to detect oesophageal and gastric cancer at early stages of disease. Three groups, each containing 216 patients, will be recruited: (i) oesophageal cancer (ii) gastric cancer and (iii) control/normal patients with upper gastrointestinal symptoms. After a baseline breath sample is collected, subjects will then be asked to consume a standard nutrient drink. Further breath samples will be collected at 0 and 15 minutes after consumption of the drink. Breath samples will be stored on thermal desportion tubes before being transfered to a central laboratory for analysis. Breath samples will be analysed in accordance with existing quality-controlled processes. A combined approach of chromatographic- and real time- mass spectrometric techniques will be applied for VOC profiling. BIORESOURCE: Samples from 335 patients will be collected in order to establish a biobank for multi-omic analyses. Three groups, each containing 75 patients, will be recruited: (i) oesophageal adenocarcinoma; (ii) gastric adenocarcinoma and (iii) oesophageal controls - benign conditions/normal gastrointestinal tract with upper gastrointestinal symptoms (iv) gastric controls - benign conditions/normal gastrointestinal tract with upper gastrointestinal symptoms. The following biosamples will be collected: breath, urine, saliva, blood, tissue and gastric contents. Collected samples will be utilised in a wide range of studies to investigate the mechanisms of VOC production in cancer. The following analyses will be performed: volatalomics, metabonomics/lipidomics, microbiome analysis, transcriptomics and cell culture experiments.