SRP-Groeifinanciering: Molecular Portrait of Pancreatic Tumours: Veni, vidi, vici

If you’d want to launch an attack on hostile land, you would never go without exploring the landscape first. So did Caesar. He came, he saw and only then he conquered (“Veni, vidi, vici”). Our team comes to undertake an innovative approach to study cancer by seeing gene expression profiles and DNA mutations in the spatial context of the tumor with all its compartments (tumor epithelium, immune cells and stellate cells). This will allow exceptionally new insights and a smarter evaluation of innovative therapeutic approaches to eventually conquer the tumor.
Our focus is on pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma, a cancer of high unmet need with extremely poor
5-year survival outcomes below 10%.
Using innovative technologies such as RNAscope, BaseScope and Digital Spatial Profiling, we aim to
1) visualize cancer subtype-specific RNA expression and DNA mutations in situ for routine tumor taxonomy and comprehensive understanding of intratumor expression patterns and 2) assess two novel therapeutic approaches tested in clinical trials: i) evolutionary changes in neoadjuvant therapy and ii) the effect of perioperative anti-inflammatory treatment.