Targeted ultrasonic contrast enhancement

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Colorectal cancer, also termed as bowel cancer, is the fourth commonest known cancer in the UK. The various treatments available currently including chemotherapy and surgery to remove the affected areas, poses a risk of complications and consequent impacts on health and lifestyle of the patients. Currently colonoscopy, MRI and CT are used for the staging of rectal cancer and its primary position. These can be limited in defining prognostic factors such as lymph node involvement and intra and extra mural invasion in the rectal wall. Development of an imaging modality that could detect these features would enable not only early detection but will also allow personalized treatment and the need of the surgery. This can subsequently improve patient's quality of life.Contrast-enhanced ultrasound has been proven to identify sentinel lymph nodes in breast cancer after intradermal injection (1). In this project, we aim to develop in-house optimal size ultrasound contrast agents targeted to specific biomarkers to visualize the lymph node metastases due to intramural invasion of rectal wall. These will be tested in vitro and in vivo in rectal cancer models at a later stage. Reference: 1. Sever AR, Mills P, Jones SE Mali W, Jones PA Sentinel node identification using microbubbles and contrast-enhanced ultrasonography. Clinical Radiology 2012 67: 687-694.