Grant: Travel Awards - Institute Community Support

The death rate from pancreatic cancer (PC) continues to rise and PC is anticipated to be the second leading cause of cancer-related deaths by 2020. The rate of PC diagnosis is almost similar to the rate of mortality because in majority of patients tumor is discovered in the late stages when it has spread throughout the body. Also, this aggressive behavior of PC gives rise to resistance to conventional treatment approaches. Therefore, there is an urgent need for development of novel treatment strategies against this devastating disease. In this study, a novel therapeutic approach through targeting a specific protein in PC cell has been investigated. We have identified a protein which is overexpressed in pancreatic tumors and inhibition of this protein by specific inhibitors in cell lines models of PC results in cancer cell death. Findings from our previous research are promising; however need extensive validation. In the current study, we conducted various experiments in human and mouse models of pancreatic cancer cells to validate relevance of this protein as an appropriate target for treatment of PC. The results confirmed our previous finding that inhibition of this protein by specific inhibitors in different model of pancreatic cancer cell lines results in cancer cell death. More importantly, cancer cells treatment with a combination of small molecule inhibitor and the conventional therapy agent, gemcitabine, reduced cell growth compared to single agent therapy. Currently there is no effective treatment against pancreatic cancer, and vast majority of patients have tumors that develop resistance to systemic therapy thus, our results may help develop a new-targeted therapy against pancreatic cancer.