UT Health San Antonio creates innovative method for advancing understanding of pancreatic cancer
Mays Cancer Center Annual Report
“Learning how to prevent cancers from happening or figuring out how to stop them in their early stages is potentially more important than treatment itself. For pancreatic cancer, the biggest problem is that we find the cancer too late.”
– Pei Wang, PhD, associate professor in the Department of Cell Systems and Anatomy at UT Health San Antonio
Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC), a certain type of pancreatic cancer, is an ominous diagnosis with an average five-year survival rate of less than 10%. Most patients are diagnosed at a late stage when the cancer has already spread throughout their bodies. And the problem is only growing worse.
By 2030, pancreatic cancer is expected to surpass colorectal cancer as the secondleading cause of cancer-related death in the United States. While many other types of cancer have seen dramatic improvements in early detection and survival rates, pancreatic cancer remains an outlier with few treatment options.
A study by scientists at The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, published in Nature Communications, provides one of the first models to study the progression of normal human pancreatic cells toward tumor cells. This could aid the development of early biomarkers and potential treatment targets for this deadly disease.
Detecting cancer before it’s too late
Previously, none of the current models for studying pancreatic cancer provided a path for an early diagnosis strategy. In contrast, primary investigator Pei Wang, associate professor in the Department of Cell Systems and Anatomy at the Joe R. and Teresa Lozano Long School of Medicine, uses a model beginning with normal human organ donor cells that are induced to become cancerous instead of using mice or biopsied tumor cells. A model of this early stage of tumorigenic development had never been conducted with human cells before.
Wang began by separating ductal and acinar cells to see if normal cells from human organ donors could become cancerous by adding the four most commonly mutated genes in pancreatic cancer. Testing showed the patterns remained stable, and each lineage could be traced to either ductal or acinar cells.
Wang said this suggests that pancreatic cancer in humans has the potential to come from both acinar and ductal cells. This means that approaches to pancreatic cancer treatment may need to become more nuanced and additional research must be conducted into the mechanistic properties of tumorigenic pancreatic cells.
Furthering earlier detection and treatment options
By starting with normal cells and forcing mutations in a short amount of time, Wang said they can see the genesis of the tumor in earlier stages. Also, through this novel PDAC model, the research team identified over 50 genes for further study as potential early biomarkers of pancreatic cancer.
Wang said she is thrilled that this model has been established so other researchers can use it to further pancreatic cancer research. It is critical that work continues to discover early detection and treatment options not only for pancreatic cancer, but for all cancers.
