A study using MRS and DCE MRI scans to look at cancer tissue in women having capecitabine chemotherapy for breast cancer (CAP 003)

This study used MRS and DCE MRI scans to look at how capecitabine (Xeloda) chemotherapy was broken down in cancer tissue.

If you have breast cancer, you may have a number of tests and scans to help doctors check on your cancer and find out how your treatment is working. These include mammograms, ultrasound and MRI scans.

There are 2 newer types of MRI scan which may help doctors understand even more about how well your treatment is working. These are Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy (MRS) scans and Dynamic Contrast Enhanced MRI (DCE MRI) scans. DCE MRI scans provide information about the blood supply to the cancer, and could help show how the drug is reaching the cancer. MRS scans provide more detailed information about what happens to chemotherapy drugs once they are inside the cancer.

Doctors wanted to see if information from the MRS scan helped them understand more about what happened to chemotherapy in the body. They hoped this information would help them work out who might be helped by certain types of chemotherapy.

In this study, the team scanned women with breast cancer who were taking capecitabine chemotherapy. They studied blood samples to see how the body broke down capecitabine. They also looked for gene changes that may affect how the body handled capecitabine. And at how this may affect how well the capecitabine worked. The aims of this study were to

• See how useful MRS scans were in helping doctors assess breast and liver tissue

• Understand more about the different responses people could have to capecitabine

• See if the scan results and treatment outcome agreed with each other