Background
tumour, oesophageal cancer
COLLAPSE, TUMOUR, OESOPHAGEAL CANCER
Radiotherapy (RT) is a standard of care treatment for a number of tumour types, including oesophageal cancer [In the context of oesophageal cancer treatment chemo-radiotherapy may be employed with both palliative and curative intent and commonly cisplatin and a fluoropyrimidine (either 5FU or capecitabine) are the chemotherapy agents of choice to be given concurrently [Cisplatin is a DNA-damaging platinum-based chemotherapy agent that promotes the formation of intra-strand DNA crosslinks thereby inducing replication fork collapse. Preclinical studies have shown that ATR is activated following cisplatin treatment and that ATR inhibition can profoundly sensitise tumour cells, including oesophageal cancer cells to platinum-based chemotherapy and radiotherapy [The combined in vitro and preclinical model studies suggest that the combination of radiation with an ATR-inhibitor will be an efficacious combination in human studies [