The field of pancreatic cancer needs a measurable biological difference — a biomarker — to tell the difference between two subtypes of the disease with a timely and cost-effective clinical test.
Fred Hutch Cancer Center researchers have discovered this indicator in the form of two cellular building blocks, or proteins, operating in tandem that can tell the subtypes apart as distinctly as the red light and green light on a traffic signal.
Pancreatic cancer expert Sita Kugel, PhD, and her colleagues in the Human Biology Division recently published their results in the journal Clinical Cancer Research.
“With our combination biomarker, you can now do that very quickly,” said Kugel, director of Basic and Translational Research in Gastrointestinal (GI) Oncology at Fred Hutch.
Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma, or PDAC, is projected to become the second leading cause of cancer-related death by 2030.
PDAC — one of the deadliest cancers in the United States, with a current five-year survival rate of 13% — strikes in two forms or subtypes: classical and basal.
