Pancreatic Cancer
The challenge to find a cure
Pancreatic cancer is known for being unpredictable and difficult to treat. It has one of the lowest survival rates among all cancers, with many patients having only a 9% chance of living five years after diagnosis, and I personally have had a few colleagues and friends who succumbed to this.
To better understand this challenging disease, researchers at Purdue University in March 2020 created a special model to study it.
They made an exciting discovery about pancreatic cancer using what they call a “time machine”, a unique way to understand how pancreatic cancer behaves. What they found was quite surprising and shed new light on this complex disease.
They used a tiny tube made of collagen that mimics the structure of the pancreatic duct, where the cancer typically starts. This model allowed them to inject cancer cells and see how they grow and change over time.
Typically, it takes many years for pancreatic cancer to develop, but this model condensed the process into just two weeks, which was a big breakthrough.
By watching the cancer cells in this “time machine,” researchers saw that when different types of cancer cells came together, they became more aggressive and formed tumours. This is important because pancreatic cancer isn’t just one disease; it involves different mutations, and by studying how these mutations interacted, scientists hoped to find new ways to treat the disease.
The unique shape of the model, which mimics the pancreatic duct’s curvature, made it more realistic than other methods, helping the researchers to see more accurately how the cancer cells behaved.
One of the most promising aspects of this research was its potential to discover new drug targets for better treatments. They’ve even found drug resistance in certain cancer cell types.
A patent has been issued for this innovative pancreatic tumour model, which is a significant step forward in understanding and hopefully finding better ways to treat this devastating disease.
This patent was issued for the pancreatic tumour model via the Purdue Research Foundation Office of Technology Commercialization.
This work was partially supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health (grants U01 HL143403, UL1 TR002529, R01 CA211098 and R01 CA124586) a Challenge Award from the Purdue University Center for Cancer Research (P30 CA023168), and the Walther Embedding Program in Physical Sciences in Oncology.
Some of this research took place at the Bindley Bioscience Center, located in Purdue’s Discovery Park.
