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Oxford's Colorectal Cancer Stratified Medicine Network

Colorectal cancer (CRC) remains the second most common cause of cancer death, and patients with stage 3/4 cancers at diagnosis only have a 10% survival rate at 5 years.

CRC presents an opportunity for precision medicine as it is common cancer, has known and established driver molecular pathways, and pre-treatment molecular stratification is achievable.

ACRCelerate brings together a European-wide consortium of researchers at the forefront of CRC research. Researchers Prof Simon Leedham and Prof Tim Maughan lead the work from Oxford, collaborating with researchers across the UK, Italy and Spain.

The overall aim of the consortium is to generate robust and reproducible preclinical data to de-risk future clinical trials based on patient stratification. This will be achieved through:

  • developing preclinical models that recapitulate the molecular subtypes of CRC and characterising their signalling pathways
  • using DNA and RNA sequencing to subtype the models, identify and test new therapeutics
  • integrating data in a bioinformatic analysis pipeline

This research is currently funded by CRUK.

Existing collaborations across the network. The hubs of the network are shown with their existing internal and external collaborationsExisting collaborations across the network. The hubs of the network are shown with their existing internal and external collaborations

This international network prevents proprietary duplication of work, enhances collaboration and training and facilitates result validation.This international network prevents proprietary duplication of work, enhances collaboration and training and facilitates result validation.

Colorectal Cancer News

Research confirms important differences in colorectal cancer patients with a history of Inflammatory Bowel Disease

IBD-associated colorectal cancers were found to occur in younger patients and have worse outcomes. Researchers call for urgent improvement of early detection methods to provide more risk-based and personalised care.

Nuffield Department of Medicine receives funding to improve bowel cancer treatment

The Leedham Lab in the Nuffield Department of Medicine (NDM) has been awarded over £2M from Cancer Research UK to develop a new tool that could help guide how bowel cancer patients are treated in the future.

Assessing a combined approach for risk-stratified population screening for colorectal cancer

Polygenic risk scores only modestly improve the predictive power of the QCancer-10 non-genetic risk score for colorectal cancer.