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Scientists have developed an oxygen test that could save cancer patients by spotting more dangerous tumours before they spread.
At the moment it is extremely difficult to identify how aggressive a cancer is in diagnosed patients or pinpoint where it is growing quickest.
More than 330,000 people are diagnosed with the disease every year in the UK.
Now top British experts have come up with a solution by discovering a way to detect a lack of oxygen in tumours.
This is considered a major breakthrough because a lack of oxygen, or hypoxia, is often a sign that a cancer is growing aggressively.
Hypoxia also stimulates the growth of blood vessels within tumours, which in turn can fuel the spread of cancer cells to other parts of the body.
If aggressive tumours can be spotted and caught early, doctors have a far greater chance of saving the lives of patients by targeting the most dangerous tumours quickly and directly with the appropriate treatment.
Experts at the Institute of Cancer Research in London and the University of Manchester have successfully tried the method by implanting cancer cells into mice.
They are now working towards clinical studies involving cancer patients.
The scans are an “oxygen-enhanced” version of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans which can map areas of oxygen deprivation within tumours - or hypoxia. This can indicate a cancer is growing aggressively.
The scans monitor alterations in image intensity caused by changes in the concentration of dissolved oxygen in blood plasma and tissue fluid.
The University of Manchester’s Dr James O’Connor, a co-leader in the research, said there was currently no “validated, affordable and widely available” imaging technique capable of rapidly assessing the distribution of hypoxia in tumours.
He said: “Our findings are already being translated for use on conventional clinical MRI scanners.”
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Dr O’Connor added: “Ultimately we hope that oxygen-enhanced MRI will not only help to identify the most dangerous tumours, but to assist radiotherapy treatment planning and for monitoring treatment response.”
Nell Barrie, senior science communications manager at Cancer Research UK , said: “When cancer cells run out of oxygen, they’re more likely to spread from the original tumour, making the disease much harder to treat.
“Spotting this process in action could help improve treatment, especially for more aggressive tumours, and this early-stage research in mice will help to find new ways to use existing scanning technology to monitor and personalise each patient’s treatment.”
The team’s work will be published in Cancer Research today.
Study co-leader Dr Simon Robinson, team Leader in Magnetic Resonance at The Institute of Cancer Research, London, said: “Our technique uses MRI technology to detect tumours with areas of oxygen depletion, which tend to be more aggressive and more resistant to radiotherapy and chemotherapy.
“Our study provides strong pre-clinical evidence to validate the use of oxygen-enhanced MRI to identify, quantify and map tumour hypoxia.”
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