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Researchers in NDM have authored a collaborative study which explored a new method for detecting bowel cancer, which was found to be more than 90% accurate at predicting which higher-risk people will develop this type of cancer in the future.

Scientist using a microscope

About 500,000 people in the UK live with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), including Crohn's and ulcerative colitis.

Patients with longstanding inflammatory bowel disease can be at an increased risk of developing colorectal cancer, and consequently often have to undergo intensive and intrusive colonoscopic surveillance tests to look for the signs of cancer development.

In rare cases where this surveillance identifies people with clear signs of precancerous change, patients face a tough choice – either to continue with increasingly frequent endoscopic tests and risk cancer development, or have their colon removed to definitively prevent disease progression.

Now a collaborative team of doctors and scientists working at the Institute of Cancer Research, St Marks Hospital and Oxford University have identified a new technique of identifying and predicting patients at risk. The test involves assessing the DNA for large scale chromosomal changes that occur within the cells of the bowel when exposed to the inflammatory changes associated with active IBD. Using a new algorithm, the team were able to use this genetic information to predict patients at risk of future cancer progression with an accuracy of 90%.

Prof Simon Leedham, Professor of Molecular and Population Genetics at NDM and the leader of the Oxford team, said: ‘The spectre of future cancer progression is a significant worry for patients with longstanding inflammatory bowel disease. With this new test we hope to able to help provide a little more certainty - by identifying those patients that need intervention whilst helping to reassure those that don’t.’

This research was funded by Cancer Research UK and was made possible through invaluable tissue sample collection from the 3 centres, supported locally by the Oxford Biomedical Research Centre.

Read the full paper on the BMJ Journals website: https://gut.bmj.com/content/early/2025/01/29/gutjnl-2024-333353