Molecular Colonoscopy
Molecular colonoscopy is a cutting edge molecular risk assessment tool, designed to estimate the risk of healthy-appearing individuals to develop colorectal neoplasia. It will provide better insights concerning a morphologically healthy-appearing individual risk for tumorigenesis, supporting results obtained from a routine colonoscopy, based on the high-throughput sequencing technologies, the QuantSeq and MiSeq. Applying this tool in each individual will detect and evaluate biomarkers that will estimate the inflammatory status, the gene expression pattern and the intestinal microbes abundances of each low risk individual. These microenvironmental alterations in the colon of each patient individually, will evaluate according to the elicited risk factors the frequency of routine Colonoscopies as well as if the use of probiotics/prebiotics or other food supplements would assist the prevention of appearing a neoplasm. Our service will be continuously refined and validated with the increasing number of humans analyzed and the access of local and international public and private medical health care bodies to our infrastructure.
In parallel, established translational protocols will be implement using Drosophila to pinpoint dietary, drug and microbial interventions that may affect regenerative inflammation, DNA damage and tumorigenesis. Additionally, Drosophila will be used for quick functional genetics and metagenomics to assess the “treatability” of novel identified biomarkers of risk for colon cancer. Cohort, cross sectional, and case-control studies are collectively referred to as observational studies. This cross sectional study doesn’t permit distinction between cause and effect. It is essential though for pinpointing candidate biomarkers of risk for neoplasias, which will be further validated in a nested cohort study determining colonic neoplasia incidence among biomarker positive vs. negative individuals. Because biomarker measurements in this cohort study will precede neoplasia incidence they may distinguish between cause and effect. Following these studies and in combination with translational studies of causality using Drosophila and mice it will become ethically acceptable to perform clinical trials including probiotic, dietary and pharmaceutical interventions against colon cancer.
