Department

Dr Brendan Luu, Ophthalmology

Project Description

Tumours in the human body fulfill their need for oxygen and nutrients through the
establishment of new blood vessels, a process known as tumour angiogenesis. This allows
tumours to sustain growth and facilitates their spread (metastasis) to distant organs in the
body by providing pathways for cancer cells to enter the systemic circulation. This process is enabled through tumour-driven production of growth factors, and research has shown that the concentrations of growth factors in human blood are significantly elevated in individuals with cancer. While the direct effects of growth factors within the tumour microenvironment is well understood, the influence of these increased growth factors on other, more distant blood vessels in the human body remains less clear.

This project will focus on the adult retinal circulation to investigate the effects of systemically raised growth factors in cancer as the retinal circulation is a highly vascular region with millions of tiny blood vessels that can respond to elevated levels of growth factors.

Brendan Luu's group has recently obtained evidence that metastatic cancer in humans is associated with a novel form of retinal angiogenesis (new blood vessel formation), characterised by an increase in the vessel density in the superficial and deep layers of the retina. These changes are most evident when the retina is analysed using OCTA (optical coherence tomography angiography) imaging – a nascent imaging modality that allows accurate and non-invasive visualisation of the microscopic retinal blood vessels.

Project Goal

The team believe's these changes can serve as an ocular biomarker of human cancer. This project aims to confirm these changes in live patients by recruiting patients with systemic cancer and comparing their OCTA images with those of healthy controls. If successfully validated, these findings could potentially revolutionise future cancer screening programs.

Project Outcomes 

Learn more about Brendan Luu's work here. 

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