Pancreatic Cancer

Research

Pancreas Cancer Research Program

The Pancreas Cancer Program has a team of investigators including doctors and doctor scientists specializing in endocrinology, epidemiology, gastroenterology, medical oncology, radiation oncology and surgical oncology who are studying critical issues in pancreatic cancer. Our investigators are interested in not only identifying better treatments, but also in identifying persons at high risk for the disease and methods for screening and prevention.

Major scientific goals include:

• Understanding the genetic and environmental factors that influence risk for pancreatic adenocarcinoma and pancreatic neuroendocrine tumor development.
• Understanding the genetic and biologic events occurring early in pancreas cancer, with a goal of developing better diagnostic tools.
• Developing new paradigms and model systems to evaluate the role of specific genes in the initiation and progression of these cancers.
• Understanding the factors that promote invasion of pancreas cancer, with a special emphasis on the supportive structure and environment of pancreatic adenocarcinoma cells and the biology of invasion and metastasis.
• Understanding the basis of drug resistance and sensitivity in pancreatic adenocarcinoma and pancreatic neuroendocrine tumors.
• Using model systems to evaluate new targeted therapies, either alone or in combination with conventional drugs in the treatment of pancreatic adenocarcinoma and pancreatic neuroendocrine tumors.

Basic Science

The Pancreas Cancer Program has an exceptionally strong and collaborative basic science component focusing on both pancreatic adenocarcinoma and neuroendocrine tumors.

Major strengths of our basic science component include:

• State-of-the-art mouse models of pancreatic cancers that are being used to explore basic mechanisms of tumor transformation and as platforms for pre-clinical evaluation of novel therapeutics to treat cancer.
• Analysis of signal transduction pathways that contribute to the abnormal proliferation, invasion and migration of pancreas cancer cells.
• Ability to derive primary cultures of primary human ductal epithelial cells (PDECs) for the analysis of early genetic and cell biological alterations in the cells that are believed to be the progenitors of pancreas cancer.

Clinical Research

The Pancreas Cancer Program also has a robust clinical research component, which includes studies in both pancreatic adenocarcinoma and neuroendocrine tumors of the pancreas.

Our current clinical research projects include:

• Novel Therapeutics for Pancreatic Adenocarcinoma: Dr. Andrew Ko and Dr. Margaret Tempero are currently leading studies investigating new therapeutics for pancreatic adenocarcinoma. They also have begun building a novel program to find out how genetic characteristics in pancreas tumors are linked to responsiveness to different treatment regimens.
• Novel therapeutics for gastrointestinal neuroendocrine tumors (NET): Over the past several years, Drs. Emily Bergsland and Alan Venook have worked to develop a clinical program focused on patients with gastrointestinal neuroendocrine tumors, which is the second-most common tumor arising in the pancreas.
• Biomarkers: Our researchers are involved in developing assessment tools that can evaluate drug sensitivity and effectiveness in patients.
• Epidemiology and Population Studies: Dr. Elizabeth Holly, a Professor of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at UCSF, is heading data analyses of large population-based case-control studies of pancreatic cancer. She also leads laboratory and clinic-based studies of the molecular epidemiology of pancreatic cancer.
• Pancreas Tissue Bank: Our researchers have developed a tissue bank of pancreatic adenocarcinomas and neuroendocrine tumors, which are collected through the UCSF Cancer Center Tissue Bank facility. This rich repository of tissue enables our investigators to begin genetic tests that help determine drug responsiveness. Information from these studies will help us to design better therapeutic strategies to treat patients with drugs that are tailored to the specific genetic and biochemical features of their disease. Moreover, these efforts are proceeding in conjunction with efforts to identify new markers, which may permit earlier diagnosis in at-risk populations and thus allow earlier and more effective intervention.
• Informatics: With the assistance of the UCSF Cancer Center's Informatics Facility, we have begun implementation of a new and powerful relational database that will house all clinical outcome data and any available molecular data from tissue specimens and analyses. Implementation of this database will serve as an important resource to investigators to identify new targets for therapy and ultimately help guide therapeutic decision-making in the future.

A more in-depth look at our UCSF Pancreas Research Program activities can be viewed at http://cancer.ucsf.edu/research/pancreas.php.

Reviewed by health care specialists at UCSF Medical Center.
Last updated August 1, 2007